The New SyFy Channel

SyFy is headed to space, and it seems as though they're serious. Last week, they announced a 10-episode pickup of The Expanse, a series that will adapt (presumably) the first book from James S.A. Corey, . In the wake of the announcement, I've seen a lot of complaints from fans, noting SyFy's general track record with shows. Despite the last five years of distancing themselves from harder SF stories, this falls in line with the direction the channel is trying to lurch itself towards, shaking off their reputation for something better. It's about time, too.

The Expanse is a good move for SyFy and the announcement that they've picked up the TV show fills me with quite a bit of optimism for the direction of the channel's future. Over the last couple of years, the channel has been talking quite a bit about returning to space, with news over the last couple of years of shows such as adaptations of Larry Niven's novel Ringworld and Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End and shows such as Ascension and Defiance. So far, only Defiance (after a really long development period) has aired, and then, to tepid reviews and ratings. But, it's a start, and shows that the channel is starting to think about bigger, more serious projects.

In the mid-2000s, the show was indisputably one of the better outlets for speculative fiction on the small screen: long-running shows such as Stargate SG-1 and its spinoff, Stargate: Atlantis collectively ran for fifteen seasons, while Farscape and Battlestar Galactica, two very ambitious space dramas, had fairly good runs before being cancelled. With the cancellation of Ronald D. Moore's Galactica in 2009, the channel seemed to get nervous about shows set in space. Galactica's ratings had nosed down over the last two seasons (most likely due to some of the narrative stunts they took), and its follow-up successor, Caprica, set decades before, never found its voice or ratings, and was cancelled a year later. A third follow-up, Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome, died a slow death as SyFy executives waddled on the decision to release it to the web or to television. Ultimately, it was burned off on YouTube, effectively ending the franchise for the channel. A third Stargate entry, Stargate: Universe, a grown up, broody and excellent entry never quite captured the same attraction as its predecessors, and ended with a frustrating cliffhanger at the end of Season 2.

SyFy pivoted, perhaps seeing the successes rival networks enjoyed with shows such as True Blood, and went in an urban fantasy and Sci-Fi lite direction. It's not really any surprise: the darker stuff hadn't really succeeded, and shows such as Eureka had done really well. Alphas, Warehouse 13, Lost Girl, Bitten and Being Human have all been developed, and dominated the network's offerings since 2009, alternatively earning praise from fans who enjoyed that type of story, and derided by those who missed the shows set in space.

All the while, SyFy expanded their offerings into reality TV, as well as the frequently-derided WWE on Wednesday nights. Often, their placement on the schedule has been explained as money makers for the channel (or, laughably, that it's a type of fantasy in and of itself), which in turn support the programming of the other scripted shows. I don't know that I've ever met anyone who's actually watched WWE on the channel.

Meanwhile, a revolution in scripted television erupted from various premium and network channels. TNT's Falling Skies, Fox's Fringe, CBS's Person of Interest, AMC's The Walking Dead, and HBO's Game of Thrones all came out, as well as show such as Awake, Under the Dome, Terra Nova, Revolution, Agents of SHIELD, Almost Human, Arrow, Orphan Black and Outcasts, to name a couple, while in non-Science fiction offerings, there's Once Upon a Time, Grimm, Supernatural, Sleepy Hollow, American Horror Story, Vampire Diaries, and others. Science Fiction TV, once largely limited to the SyFy channel, found new homes. While not all have been successful, it shows that there's a new appetite for speculative works on the small screen, and that such shows can not only do well, but do really well. SyFy, while it's had some success with their current offerings, hasn't had any hits on the same scale. They easily could have, with the right mindset.

Major projects such as The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones aren't easy projects to bring to television: they're big, elaborate, and cover subject material that's far from the material that SyFy was putting out between 2003-2008. They're ambitious (and I'll throw Person of Interest in there, too, as an example of what network channels *can* also do.) and have received a disproportionate amount of praise from critics and fans alike, all the while seeing their ratings go up as viewers keep watching.

It's clearly a balancing act: Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead take on popular properties and subject matter, all the while they're fairly well written and scripted. Others miss out: Awake, while fantastic, never caught on. Terra Nova was silly and stupidly expensive. Fringe lasted on critical glee, but wanted for viewers. Others just do really well with the right combination of characters and story, building year after year: Supernatural is well into its tenth year, and has a spin off in the works, while Arrow doesn't seem to be going anywhere but up (and also has a spinoff in the works).

SyFy's clearly got the vision for ambitious projects, but they're held back; from themselves. It's a business, and accordingly, the material they're turning out needs to be successful. However, it's always seemed as though this very risk-adverse mindset percolates down into what's being picked up. They say that you never make the shot that you don't take, and the channel has been on a course where they're only taking shots where the basket is five feet off the floor. Until Defiance, it's seemed that there's no sense of risk to the shows that they've tried, but rather gone back to the well time and time again for material that is proven to run with a certain audience.

In many ways, SyFy pivoted one way, anticipating an audience that they wanted to grasp, only to end up missing an audience that's since moved beyond the SyFy walls. Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Orphan Black and Doctor Who have become the destination shows that would make a dynamite portfolio for a dedicated genre-channel. Even the ambitious Defiance feels like it's a compromise, existing only due to the momentum that a $100 million show causes. They've got a season 2, but the show won't take off until the show becomes something a bit more interesting. Shows such as Helix have demonstrated that they're ready to bring back some serious scripted drama.

Recently, SyFy seems to have realized something was up, and has been shaking off like a wet dog. VP Mark Stern, who oversaw the Battlestar-Defiance years at SyFy, and who's been replaced by Bill McGoldrick. McGoldrick shift earlier this year has come with a lot of talk about bringing SyFy back. In an interview with Adweek, he noted that they've realized that scripted drama is what the channel's reputation lives and dies by. The current reputation? Wounded from reality TV and crappy films. But, with the rise of shows such as Game of Thrones, they're starting to see serious offers for new shows, one of which was apparently The Expanse.

If there's a show that'll demonstrate that the channel is serious about bringing back 'proper' science fiction, it's Leviathan Wakes. The show has just about everything: spacecraft, epic world-building, military science fiction, conspiracies, and a huge cast of interesting and diverse characters. It's large, hits all of the right notes, and it comes with a built in audience of readers who've made the books hits. The first novel was nominated for the Hugo Award, and along with a bunch of shorter entries in the series, an additional three novels were ordered after the first three. The fourth book in the series, Cibola Burn, hits this summer, this time as a more expensive hardcover novel (as opposed to trade paperback, like its preceding three books.)

Moreover, SyFy seems to realize that story's paramount. Rather than putting together a pilot and worrying about ordering a full, 22-episode season, they've committed to a run of ten episodes - enough time to tell the story, but not so much that they'll have to really stretch their special effects budget. In addition to The Expanse, SyFy has recently announced a limited 12 Monkeys series and Ascension, a limited series about a group of colonists, all the while cutting back on the B films.

Most of the complaints genre fans have had about SyFy are true. The channel's shifted direction and gone the safe route, and accordingly, they've really missed out on both the opportunity to do great things, but also hitched themselves to the wrong horse, one that's slowly running down. The Expanse has the potential to be an innovating move that can get the channel restarted with good stories, and can bring back an audience that they really want to attract. Already, shows such as Alphas, Being Human and Warehouse 13 have been wound down and ended, while SyFy is keeping shows like Lost Girl and Haven (which picked up a 2-season, 26 episode order) to have a balanced set of offerings for the foreseeable future. If you're going to shake off a reputation, you've got to start somewhere.

There’s also a level of caution here. I don’t think fans should expect a return to the same SciFi channel that existed in the early 2000s. The landscape has changed, and accordingly, so has viewer tastes and viewing habits. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing a new channel that takes both storytelling and genre seriously, recognizing exactly what makes a good show that’ll not only do well season to season, but help the channel’s reputation and build on its audience year to year, which will mean more excellent projects will be attempted. More importantly, SyFy needs to learn to take risks. Even for projects that aren’t necessarily successful, the effort not only counts, but helps all involved figure out what to do next, in theory making things better in the future.

The Expanse is far from certain: it's an ambitious project to run, and likely expensive. But, I'm optimistic. It's got just about everything that science fiction fans have been asking for, and in an adaptation model that's worked in the past. Let's hope that the show-runners will do the books justice, but more importantly, tell a great story.

Geek Things of 2010

This was possibly one of the best years that I’ve had in a long time. There were geek things abound, in all facets of life: in literature, film, current events, science, music and people. 2010 was a fantastic year for me. In roughly chronological order, here are the notable geek moments of the year:

This year seems to have been the year for newly-published authors. Nora Jemisin exploded out of the gate with her book The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the first of a trilogy in an excellently conceived of world, one where gods and humans interact and where there are consequences for those who were chained, and those who held the chains. I was particularly blown away by this book, and look forward to diving into book two: The Broken Kingdoms sometime in 2011.

Canadian Science Fiction author Peter Watts became a bit of a martyr in the eyes of many in the science fictional world when he was thrown into jail for resisting arrest at a border crossing earlier this spring. News of his imprisonment and the details of his predicament spread like wildfire, spurring outrage. Watts has since been convicted and released, and won't be able to travel into the U.S..

I trooped in February with the 501st in New York City to support a product launch. What a surreal day: who would have thought of the combination of Star Wars, Snoop Dogg and Adidas?

The long-running UK show Dr. Who saw its latest rejuvenation in the form of Matthew Smith this year, along with show runner Steven Moffat, who's penned some of the best Dr. Who episodes that I've seen in the latest run. I only was able to catch a couple of the new episodes, but what I saw, I really liked.

One of the films that was a sure train wreck from the trailers was Clash of the Titans. It's decent, mindless monster porn with action and special effects, but for a regular movie? It was pretty bad, and the slapped together 3D helped show audiences that it's a stunt on the part of movie studios to rake in more money per ticket. Where 2009 saw Avatar as the big bright moment for 3D, 2010 saw that it was only good when natively filmed with the extra dimension, rather than slapped on with additional CGI.

Another new author broke into the ranks of the published, author Blake Charlton, with his first novel, Spellwright. While the novel wasn't perfect, it was enjoyable, and I've had the good fortune to talk extensively with him over the course of the year (while he splits writing time with his medical education). This book in particular draws upon Charlton's own experiences with Dyslexia, which allows the book a unique feel when it comes to the mechanics of world building and magic. Bring on book two, Spellbound, due out this year. !

One of my favorite authors from high school / camp, Karin Lowachee, returned from several years of absence for a new book titled The Gaslight Dogs, one of the better Steampunk books that I've read thus far. Set in an unconventional world to the North, Lowachee weaves together some interesting characters and settings in an entertaining novel. I eagerly await the sequels for this planned trilogy.

Earlier this year marked a major uproar when amazon.com attempted to flex its muscles against Macmillan publishers, who had been pushing for higher prices for its new hardcover books. Amazon pulled the books from the publisher, which outraged a lot of people - authors who found that their books weren't being sold for a couple of days before they were all put back into place.

April 20^th saw a massive explosion on the Deep Water Horizon oil rig when a plume of natural gas came up the well that they were drilling. The resulting oil spill lasted for three months and involved a major engineering and environmental effort to cap and contain the oil spill. Undoubtedly, the effects will be seen for years to come in the environmental and economic health of the region. The containment of the well itself is an achievement in and of itself, with an apt description of the process as similar to the Apollo 13 rescue.

Vermont singer/songwriter Anaïs Mitchell gained quite a lot of attention with her concept album Hadestown, a post-apocalyptic folk opera retelling of the legend of Orpheus. It's a mouthful, but an extensive cast of notable singers (such as Bon Iver and Ani DeFranco) join her in an impeccable work of music, story and art. This album was absolute perfection.

In July, at the urging of a former college professor, I drove down to ReaderCon, a regional science fiction convention that boasted an impressive list of authors and fans. Unlike most of the conventions that I've been to, this was devoted extensively to literature, and while there, I was able to meet a number of authors that I've long admired (and learned of there) such as Charles Stross, Allen M. Steele, Elizabeth Hand, Blake Charlton, Paolo Bacigalupi, David Forbes, N.K. Jemisin, and quite a few others. I had an absolute blast this year, and I'm eagerly awaiting the trip next year. Hopefully, I'll be able to visit some other similar cons this year.

I didn't catch this until later in the year, but Predators was a film that was released that had been one that I'd wanted to see in theaters. Where the first film was an 80s action film with too much brawn and no brains, this film was a smart, dynamic science fiction thriller, one that vastly improved the franchise. As io9 said, it's the perfect B movie. I'm inclined to agree.

While it was a sparse year for good genre films, one stood easily out amongst the others: Inception. It was a fantastic balance between action and story, with a thought-provoking storyline that dips its feet into the science fiction pool just as much as needed to push the story forward, exploring the mind and the possibilities of imagination. It’s on my slowly growing list of top science fiction films ever.

1B1T proved that Twitter could be more than mindless, as Wired Magazine ran a poll to see if they could get all of twitter reading the same book. The result? Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, broken down into an easy reading schedule – it made for a great excuse to re-read the book and talk to a number of people on a global scale.

Another new author, Charles Yu impressed me with his short story collection, Third Class Superhero this past spring and doubly so over the summer with his book, How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe, a brilliant time travel story that stands out from most books that I read this year. Yu's book becomes part of the story itself, and can easily be compared to the works of Douglas Adams with its dry humor.

Last year, Paolo Bacigalupi blew me away with his novel The Windup Girl, and this year, his follow-up YA novel Ship Breaker could easily fit into the same post-oil world. Global warming is rampant, people are exploited, and with that in the background, there's a very basic and interesting story that pulls the reader through. Bacigalupi's a guy to watch, and this book demonstrated that he's no one hit wonder.

Apple launched their new device and product category this year, the iPad, and when a really good deal came through earlier this year, I bought one, something that I wasn't expecting to do. So far, it's easily the best thing that I've bought all year long. It's an amazingly good computer, and it works very well with what I've long used a computer for, while being more convenient than a laptop. It's a multi-purpose device that I've been able to use extensively over the course of the year, for writing, reading, web work, music and games. For my first Apple early adoption, it's come off far better than my first iPod.

This year's Hugo Awards presented a rare event: a tie for Best Novel: Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl and China Mieville's The City and The City (more on that in a moment) both received the award in addition to every other award that they scooped up along the way. (Quite a few!). Moon also picked up the movie award.

The animated Star Wars Clone Wars TV show has been popular, but for me, up and down in quality. The opening episode was impressive, but from everything that I've seen beyond that, it's become an exceedingly boring show. When the ads point to the passage of an arms bill in the Republic senate as the exciting bits, you should probably reevaluate. Hopefully, it'll get a bit better soon.

When it came to television shows that disappoint, LOST came to an end is year with a finale that ended the show, but one that didn't wow me like it should have. There was too much lost when it came to possibilities, and it felt more like an ending and an epilogue that wasn't needed.

Masked is a superhero anthology, featuring a number of authors taking on the super powered and the caped. I've yet to finish it, and while I've been enjoying most of it, there are only so many stories of a Batman clone before I have to question the need for the story to be included.

One of the better anthologies that I read all year, Stories: All New Tales, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio is an impressive book that looks to the idea that stories should be things that demand that you turn the page to find out what happens next. This collection of stories, which boasts an impressive list of contributors, is one that I really enjoyed reading through - there's a bit of every genre here, from science fiction to fantasy to horror to crime fiction. Worth picking through and reading for all of the excellent stories.

Military science fiction stories are fascinating reads - I've read a number of them this year, and by far, the most thought-provoking was Adam Robert's New Model Army. The premise is one that's very modern: what happens when the wiki-culture moves into warfare? While I think that a lot of what would have happened in the book would never come to pass, it does have some interesting ideas behind it, and by far, was one of the better books that I read all year.

Iron Man 2 would have done well to capitalize on the military science fiction stories that the first was known for: a tight, interesting and well conducted special effects spectacular. The trailers looked awesome, but the film just fell flat: it was overblown, nonsensical at times, and not nearly as good as the first one. It did have its good parts, such as Sam Rockwell's zany character, and some fun action scenes.

Kirby Krackle completely rocked my world this year. Their sound is pretty basic when it comes to the actual music, but they rocked it pretty well. In a world where there a few songs that are so passionate about Green Lantern or zombies, their album E for Everyone really stood out for me, and it's an awesome bit of music to bounce around to. These guys are the new voice of fandom.

The first big cancellation from SyFy earlier this year was Caprica, which launched with a great cast of characters and a whole lot of potential, this precursor to Battlestar Galactica was a show that really needed to be trimmed down and to find its focus a bit. Numerous storylines, characters and themes all running together worked well, but the writing was on the wall early on: the show could have been just as good or better than BSG, (and was, at points), but its ratings couldn't sustain it. It's a real shame: the show could have been better than BSG.

In it's second season, Stargate Universe continued to impress me, and it's recent cancellation has me far more upset than the axing of any other television show that I've watched (even Firefly, although I saw that post-cancellation). A step up for the franchise as a whole, this season of Universe was brilliant, well acted and had a lot going for it, and I hope that the next ten episodes will see some good closure and storytelling. Still, maybe it'll be one of those shows that was awesome and never had a chance to get bad, much like Firefly.

One of the absolute best books that I read this year was China Miéville’s The City and The City, which was up for a number of awards this year, including the Hugo. I picked this up after the hype started to go, and it lived up to, and exceeded my expectations by a long margin. Wonderfully plotted in a well thought-out world, Miéville crafts a murder mystery with a fantastic background, and puts to paper one of the best books of the year.

The mathematician who was responsible for some major advances in mathematics and theory died earlier this year, Benoit Mandelbrot. Also the subject of a Jonathan Coulton song: Mandelbrot Set.

Stephen Moffat ruled the Dr. Who universe for a while now, but I liked his take on Sherlock Holmes far more. Set in the modern day, Sherlock is a retelling of the story, with Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson and Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes. A far better take on the character than Robert Downey Jr.'s in the film adaptation (which was also quite fun), Sherlock was fantastic from start to cliff-hanger. I already can't wait for Series 2.

In the wake of Sherlock, Martin Freeman was selected to play Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, which is finally moving forward, along with what looks like a great cast. It’s still a shame that Guillermo del Toro isn’t directing though.

Zombies have been all the rage for a while now, and (no pun intended) have been done to death. The Walking Dead falls into a couple of categories with me. The pilot episode was fantastic - one of the better takes on a man waking up to find civilization gone, but it's a story that really doesn't add much to the canon, and while it had its interesting points, it's something that I'm more or less indifferent to. We'll see how Season 2 goes.

While Zombies have been very popular, 2010 saw a bit of a decline in the hysteria over Vampires, while Steampunk came in as a solid genre. The Steampunk craze has gotten some major attention: Sherlock Holmes took on a couple of Steampunkish elements, while Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) in the show Castle became a convert as publishers such as Pyr and Tor have published a number of books in the genre. It's something that's here to stay, that's for sure.

When it comes to Pyr books, one of their offerings for the year that I read earlier this was Ian McDonald's River of Gods, which took place in a futuristic India. The Dervish House is his latest book, taking place in a futuristic Turkey. I haven't finished the book yet, but I'm loving its rich attention to culture and interconnected storyline.

Going back to geek music, a friend of mine, John Anealio, turned me towards Marian Call earlier this year at ReaderCon, and when she came through Vermont on her 49 state tour this year (an impressive feat in and of itself), I was able to catch her at Montpelier's Langdon Street Cafe for a geeky set of music and a couple of quick words with Marian. She's a lovely singer, one who's popular for all of the right reasons. Geek music was something that I focused on quite a bit this year, putting together a playlist that's almost 700 songs long, and while doing so, came across a strange trend with some of the more higher-profile stuff that trends more towards Geek Pop music. Songs like G33ks and G4m3r Girls by Team Unicorn were almost unlistenable earworms, laundry-lists of popular geek things without the real soul of "geek" stuff to begin with. It'll be interesting to see if there's more of it as geek stuff gets more and more popular.

Speaking of John Anealio, he's someone to keep an eye on, and someone that I befriended earlier this year at ReaderCon. John's an excellent geek musician, with some fantastic songs released earlier this year, such as 'Stormtrooper for Halloween' and 'I Should Be Writing'. Kirby Krackle might speak for fandom, but Anealio speaks for the fans themselves. I can't wait to see what he comes up next.

Another outfit to keep an eye out for is Symphony of Science, which continued to release a number of tracks of auto tuned scientists (namely Carl Sagan) with a wonderful collection of music that speaks to science and the wonders of the universe.

One of the films that I'm practically drooling over in anticipation for is Battle: Los Angeles, which can best be described as Independence Day meets Black Hawk Down. The early buzz from San Diego Comic Con was good, and the trailer showed that there was going to be some excellent looking action. The film is due out in March of 2011, and I really hope that it'll live up to my expectations.

While I panned iFringe when it first came out, but I've grown to love it and really rued my words: with Stargate Universe off the air, it's easily the best science fiction show on TV right now, and while its ratings have dropped and it's been moved to Friday nights, I'm hoping that the show will continue onwards. This season has seen less of the blood and gore, but has an excellent alternate universe storyline that's heating up. I can't wait for new episodes starting up later this week!

One of the coolest things to happen in the realm of space exploration happened was the Deep Impact Probe, launched on 2005 to take a look at the 9P/Tempel comet. The probe released an impactor earlier this year and took a number of high resolution pictures as it passed by and analyzed the impact to see what it was made of.

The other top book of the year was easily Joe Hill's second novel, Horns, mixing popular culture, horror iconology and religious allegory together in a story that absolutely gripped me and blew me away while I was reading it.

It was a sad day in December when Leslie Nielsen passed away. Airplane is one of my favorite comedies, while Forbidden Planet is easily one of my favorite science fiction films. He will certainly be missed. Right on the heels of Nielsen was Irvin Kershner, who directed the greatest of the Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back. It's a shame that his work was never quite matched with the franchise. Ironically, his film was one of 25 preserved by the Library of Congress's National Film Registry.

On December 9th, the private space firm SpaceX made history when it launched it's Falcon 9 rocket into orbit carrying a dragon capsule. It became the first private firm to orbit the earth and safely return, joining a small number of countries who have accomplished the same thing.

When it comes to dragons, a film released this year that I only just caught was How To Train Your Dragon, a great kids film with a fun story and some good graphics. At the same time, I can also recommend Toy Story 3 for many of the same reasons - excellent storytelling and a positive end for that franchise.

Wikileaks occupied most of the news coverage for the last part of the year as they released thousands of diplomatic cables in addition to their leak of classified military dispatches written over the course of the Iraq / Afghanistan war. The leaks demonstrated the power of the internet: and the necessity to keep secrets a bit more secure. Given the lack of ability of the British government to keep track of their own files, I'm surprised that they haven't been the target of more leaks.

I first saw the original Tron earlier this year in anticipation for Tron: Legacy, and I came out of the theaters with a film that met my expectations. It was a blockbuster that was fun, but it could have been so much more than it was. With Disney working on sequels and a television series, I'm not sure that the franchise is going anywhere, but box office results have been somewhat lax, given all the advanced hype and marketing for the film.

That ends out the year. It’s been an impressive one, and one that marked a couple of milestones for me: I’ve written, talked to, read and watched so much in the speculative fiction genre, and I’m loving the immersion. There’s a long list of people to thank for it: Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane Anders, John DeNardo, John Anelio, Patrick Hester, Aiden Moher, Blake Charlton, Charles Yu, Paolo Bacigalupi, David Forbes, Jim Ehrman, N.K. Jemisin, John Scalzi, David J. Williams, Christie Yant, John Joseph Adams, Karin Lowachee, Megan Messinger, Bridget McGovern, Brit Mandelo, Scott Eldeman, Blastr, everybody at io9, SF Signal and Tor.com, people who commented and e-mailed me because of what I wrote and everyone who encouraged my writing and reasoning over the year. Most of all, Megan, for everything. It’s been the best year for me to date, and I’m looking forward to an even better 2011.

The Way of the Firefly

The Syfy channel, via Craig Engler, has just announced that they're ending Stargate Universe after they finish out the next ten episodes of the current season, effectively stopping the franchise on the television. It's a shame, because SGU has rapidly become one of the more interesting and compelling science fiction dramas on television, and it was doing good things for the franchise, taking it in a very interesting direction.

Unfortunately, it's also not a surprise. Going out on a short limb, the ratings for the show have been pretty low, on par with what Caprica was getting, and it seems that unlike in prior years, with a solid block of Stargate SG-1/Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica, the combined efforts of Starate Universe and Caprica on a Tuesday night didn't have the same effect on audiences.

There's a recurring lesson here: the reasons for a show getting cancelled are generally up to audience numbers, and fans, just as much as the channel are on the hook. In every instance of a cancelled science fiction show, low ratings have been generally been a universal factor: Firefly, Life on Mars (US), Stargate SG-1/Atlantis, Kings, Battlestar Galactica and Dollhouse are all examples. Off the top of my head, the only shows that haven't been canceled only because of ratings was Babylon 5 (which almost didn't make it) and LOST, (which saw its release altered to lower numbers of episodes per season). The circular logic kicks in as fans don't stick with a show, and the home channels don't do enough to keep them.

In this instance, Stargate Universe had an incredible uphill battle to keep going for even a season. The show as a whole is very much against the grain when it comes to the style of shows that its predecessors were, and opted to go for the darker, edgier route that Battlestar Galactica had gone. It's increasinly appearing that Battlestar was an oddity, which has darker implications in and of itself. Given the dropping ratings and low audience numbers for the show, I can't get too angry at SyFy for cancelling the show. Like any channel, it's a business, and when things get unprofitable, it's impossible to keep them going in that type of environment. For all of the arguments about new media such as Hulu, on demand viewing and the like, Engler has talked a lot on his twitter feed about how there's no model yet for payment, and that a lot of these types of things are still playing out. This is all within an increasing environment where piracy is on the rise, which further impacts a show's audience. (I think that this is a bit of a lesser degree than argued though).

Stargate's long been a favorite franchise of mine, and Universe especially so. They've done some cool things with it: brought on John Scalzi as a creative consultant, brought in a very cool cast, and told some stories that are amongst the best that I've seen in the franchise. There's some great, real-world science things brought in, and a take on military science fiction and characters that makes quite a lot of sense to me. Even the visuals have been fantastic.

The moral of the story comes down to the fans. For all of the rage that's directed at the SyFy channel, it's a bit misguided: they're certainly not going out to cancel major projects that they've sunk a lot of money into. At the same time, as the channel works to put on more and more B-movies for their weekend shows and fairly mindless shows such as Warehouse 13, Sanctuary and Haven, I wish that they would find a way to make some of their investments work better for today's audiences, and use these new means to bring better, compelling and interesting science fiction to the small screen.

The next one on the horizon is Fringe, moved ominously to Friday night (and which moved episode is titled 'Firefly'), which has also seen diminishing numbers. Hopefully, with ten episodes to go, SGU will be able to end on a good note, with a bit of proper closure. Hopefully, they'll get home and remain as brilliant as they've been for the past two years.

The Walking Dead

The striking thing that I noticed about The Walking Dead's first episode, 'Days Gone By' is the stark, minimal feel to a post-Zombie world. There's no music, just the footsteps, birdcalls and buzzing of flies that hang in the air as the action moves forward. The TV show, which has thus far broken all viewer records for the host channel AMC, seemed like an almost guaranteed hit for the channel. The reasons for the success extend beyond the inclusion of zombies, but because the show is something that resonates with a modern audience.

Zombies have been on the rise in recent years: major film productions have been popular, such as 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, (And of course, the George Romero films that have come out) in addition to books such as Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker, World War Z (And The Zombie Survival Guide, both by Max Brooks) John Joseph Adam's Zombie anthologies, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Seth Grahame-Smith (and Jane Austin), with The Walking Dead remaining popular in print form, and now jumping mediums to the small screen, where it seems like it’s well suited for television.

As an adaptation goes, The Walking Dead is off to a decent start. Rather than giving into the impulse to make a show that was high on action and rapid pacing, the show’s creators have gone in the opposite direction: Days Gone By, much like the comic, is paced slowly, and the end result is a fairly slow episode: in any other context, I would have found the show fairly boring – there’s plenty of suspense, but one major element (the whereabouts and wellbeing of Grime’s family) is revealed fairly early on. The first major encounter with a mass of the undead doesn’t happen until the end of the episode, in a particularly frightening scene as Grimes and his horse are surrounded.

As it stands, The Walking Dead is possibly one of the better takes on the zombie genre thus far: the message and point of the show isn’t about the undead themselves, but the world around the survivors. Zombies stories have been rife with allegory, and both print and motion picture versions do exactly that.

A standout moment in Sunday’s episode saw some discussion as to how people hadn’t prepared for the events that transpired. Given the political climate present in the country at the moment, it’s not a hard leap to imagine. Zombie fiction tends to lend itself well to a libertarian dream of a more down to earth rule of law, without the worries of infrastructure and government, living on one’s own wits and instructs. Then there’s the guns.

The decline of the U.S. economy is something that has been at the forefront of political and economic news for almost two years, and I can’t help but wonder if shows such as Jericho (cancelled after a season and revived, only to be cancelled again) would have better succeeded if it had aired just a couple of years later. Other shows that have reflected the political feelings of the day have done well critically, such as SyFy’s Battlestar Galactica, HBO’s True Blood or Fox’s 24. While this isn’t a singular contributing factor, relevancy is something that a public audience will relate and respond to.

Here, amongst the shambling zombies, there’s a good set of themes that the series seems to have picked up on and incorporated into its storylines. In addition to the rise in popularity of the zombies themselves, The Walking Dead has an exceptionally bright future. Indeed, it’s already been renewed for a second season to follow up the first six episodes that compose the first season.

While the zombie bandwagon has been an easy thing to jump on - the popularity is only going to peak from this point on - The Walking Dead is a good example of both an adaptation and of the use of zombies. The original comic book seems to have translated very well, with creators understanding the overall picture and changes needed for the small screen. Like any bandwagon, there have been a number of stories, films and comics that have included zombies to some extent, with widely varying levels of quality. The focus, for some of the best stories, it seems, should be not on the zombies themselves, but on the people that they effect. While I've tried to avoid fanboying the craze, the show offers a quality story, rather than gimmicks to help it succeed.

Beyond the successes of a zombie show (the first that I’m aware of), the introduction of a well executed and received genre show is a very good thing, especially in the middle of a television season that has been lacking. The Walking Dead is looking to be a compelling and interesting drama. Thus far, it looks like it’s lining up to do just that.

I, Human, not I, Robot

Looking over my bookshelves, I had a bit of a revelation: there are very few books that really use robots as characters in them. Taking a look, I only see Isaac Asimov's I, Robot and several additional collections of short stories, a collection of Ray Bradbury stories that contains 'There Will Come Soft Rains', a couple of Iain M. Bank's Culture novels, Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ekaterina Sedia's Alchemy of Stone and maybe a couple of others that I passed over. An additional trio of books: Ambassadors from Earth, Edison's Eve and Wired For War all represent a significant figure when it comes to real - life robotic systems and theory. However, looking over the movies that I have on my shelves, robotic characters readily come to mind: C-3P0 and R2-D2 from Star Wars, The Terminator from that franchise, Robbie from Forbidden Planet, the replicants from Blade Runner, Ash from Alien, Andrew from Bicentennial Man, Sonny from I, Robot, and so forth.

I have to wonder about this: there is a large gap in recognizable characters between the two mediums, film and literature. Film seems to contain far more in the way of robots, androids and mechs that come to mind, while I have a difficult time remembering the names of some of the characters from some of my absolute favorite science fiction books.

The first element in which film readily becomes the better medium is its visual nature, allowing for elaborate costumes, props and CGI'ed components of metal and plastics that make up what audiences really think about with robotic characters. Some of the most dramatic imagery from science fiction cinema includes robots: C-3P0 and R2 in the hallway of the Tanative IV, The Terminator coming out of the flames, Ash getting his head bashed in, and so forth. Simply put, robotics are more visual, allow for some differences between living characters and their mechanical servants.

The use of the term 'Robot' goes back to 1923 (1) with Karel Čapek's play, Rossum's Universal Robots, and according to genre historian Adam Roberts, came at a certain time of anti-machinery sentiment with science fiction at the time, with other books, such as with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Olaf Stapledon's The Last and First Men look to the use of mechanical and scientific processes and as a result, a population that overly depends upon them as something wholly against nature and counter-productive to humanity as a whole: societies are generally dystopic and dehumanize their inhabitants. This somewhat fits with some modern science fiction films, such as the far futures of The Terminator and The Matrix, and even with Wall*E, where an overreliance of machines results in our destruction, or at least an enormous disruption of society. (2) Indeed, Robot comes from the Czech term robota, which translates to servitude.(3)

Indeed, it should come as no surprise that early views towards robotics weren't necessarily looked at in any sort of favorable light: throughout history, a constant struggle between leaders and those being led has come about, and one lesson that a history teacher (Mr. David Munford, thank you), imparted was the destruction of clocks and machines during one early worker uprising. The use of factories in particular lends itself well to machinery and associated dystopia images and themes. Henry Ford put to good use the assembly line, which relegated skilled labor to fastening single bolts day in and day out. It is particularly ironic that those human workers were in turn replaced by robots who do the same roles for them.

In literature, then, the use of robotics goes far beyond characters, but is typically used as part of a larger theme that a novel is trying to push across to the reader. The Three Laws of Robotics that are central to Isaac Asimov's robot books are particularly conscious of this fact, and represents some level of paranoia on the part of the human race that at some points, robots will eventually take over humanity because of their inherent strengths over human flesh: stronger, faster, smarter, etc. This makes Asimov’s novels somewhat different from the earlier books with mechanical imagery linked to dystopia: Asimov’s world shows where a fall of society has not occurred because of the indulgences by humans, but generally only because the robots that we’ve essentially created in our own image are just as screwed up as we are. Dystopia, in this case, may be in Asimov’s futures – we certainly see that in his Foundation stories – but for the time being, he views a world with robotics as one where robotics act as a natural counterpart for humanity, rather than a replacement, although the threat, held in place by his three laws, is still there.

In films, however, different elements are brought out: robots are the servants of humanity & associated sentient life in Star Wars, performing vital and specialized tasks while interfacing with their creators. The same goes for the robots in Blade Runner and Wall*E. At other points, they're used for war, such as in Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, where they then turn on their human creators for a variety of reasons, or under the control of a vast, superhuman intellect, such as in the Terminator franchise. Here, these elements often, but not always, hearken back to a sort of dystopia, where robotics are part of a larger problem: it represents the failure of the human race to continue with its biological need to reproduce, and demonstrates some basic elements of life itself: Darwinism or survival of the fittest. Those that cannot keep up, will be destroyed, or at least overcome.

Within literature, the larger themes of dystopia and robotics are used, with the protagonist generally someone who overcomes the system/society/social norm to relearn what it means to be human, and there is a larger theme of the scientific, mechanical, logical order, represented by robotics, and a more organic, theological, chaos, represented by people. At points, this is represented with some very pointed examples: Ray Bradbury’s ‘There Will Come Soft Rains’, which shows a robotic house living diligently on long after its inhabitants have destroyed themselves. However, the reason that robots themselves seem to be fewer and farther between is because there is an inherent need for this dystopia theme to be present in the film: it represents the weakness of humanity, carries with it religious overtones and two extremely different styles of thinking all wrapped up into a single character, which oftentimes, seems to be difficult to work in or really justify as a regular character in a book that takes just part of the story, especially if they are not the central part of a story. Their existence represents so much in relation to their human counterparts, it would seem almost a waste to have a story with a side character as a robotic entity, rather than fleshing out everything that he/she/it represents.

With movies, these themes are there occasionally, but generally, explosions and violence comes first and foremost in the eyes of paying audience members.

1 - Jeff Prucher, Editor. Brave New Worlds: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction. Oxford University Press, 2007, 164 2 - Adam Roberts. The History of Science Fiction. Palgrave Press, 2005, 159 3 - Ibid, 168

The Reboot

Earlier today, science fiction author John Scalzi unveiled a long-standing project that he's been working on for a while, a sort of reboot of a novel called Little Fuzzy by H. Bearn Piper, entitled Fuzzy Nation. While the book is still being written and shopped around, it's likely going to hit shelves at some point in the near future - Scalzi is a Hugo-award winning author, written a bunch of good books, has an insanely popular blog and is a creative consultant for SyFy's Stargate Universe, a reboot in and of itself. The idea behind this book is that it's a complete reboot, using elements of the original, but in and of itself, is an entirely new story.

Scalzi's announcement earlier today is an interesting one in the current state of the entertainment industry, where sequels have largely been changed out for reboots: taking old subject matter and updating the story, characters and other elements that are familiar with an audience. Most recently, the movie Clash of the Titans has been released to theaters, a take off of the original story, with its own elements updated, with modern actors and special effects to provide audiences with a fairly mindless pre--summer blockbuster.

The major reboot of our time, which likely started up this process is SyFy's Battlestar Galactica, where Ron Moore took on the major story elements from the original 1978 television series and reworked everything: the titular ship, some of the characters and background elements remained, but the larger story grew on its own with changes to other characters, the tone of the series and so on. The result was fantastic: the original show, which has been largely seen as something between Star Wars and Mormons in space, has taken on an entirely new mythology, message and feel that has not only brought the show to modern audiences, but has done so successfully.

There is a quote from a television series regarding art (the show was Law and Order: Criminal Intent - the context doesn't diminish the significance here), that fits with this situation: Art is a product of the time that it is created in (paraphrased). This is something that can be applied to any number of paintings, films, television shows, and now, books.

The purpose of a rebooted franchise or singular film is not necessarily to improve upon the original, but to bring it to the attention of modern audiences. While in some instances, this could be achieved by merely bringing out the film in a big sort of re-release on an anniversary, oftentimes, there are things that have become dated in their visual effects and/or stories. As stories are created within their own time, they are influenced by a number of other elements surrounding them: global politics, the state of their country of origin, and so forth, and as such, these stories, which might have been relevant at the time of their creation, become dated because the context in which they are relevant is no longer around.

One very good example of this is the Star Wars franchise, wildly popular from the beginning, with allusions towards World War II, Vietnam, good and evil, all within a specific time and climate in which the United States maintained ongoing hostilities against the Soviet Union. It was a time where there was a very clear-cut picture that could be painted, whereas nowadays, the picture is far more convoluted, with any number of problems cropping in. As such, when the prequel films The Phantom Menace, and Attack of the Clones hit the big screens in 1999 and 2002, they entered a very different world, and societal context, and as such, the stories suffered. Revenge of the Sith was somewhat of an outlier here, where there were some more relevant themes throughout the film, and because of that, the film was stronger than the prior to. Another notable example of where a major franchise has failed is the recent Superman Returns, where the creators attempted to bring around the nostalgic feel for the classic character. It just didn’t work in the modern day.

Battlestar Galactica, on the other hand, demonstrates where an established franchise can be improved with time. With the modern version came a much darker attitude, terrorist bombings, secret agents, all elements borne out of the feelings in the United States after September 11th, 2001. Galactica transitioned well, because it was an entirely new story, but because of the major changes, it succeeded. For that reason, the proposed sequel shows likely would have failed.

Essentially, there is a major difference here between bringing back a show for nostalgic purposes, and for bringing back a show or established franchise to essentially wring more money out of a fan base, and even to resurrect an old story because there is some genuine elements to it that can stand to be updated for a modern day and age. Star Wars largely failed on the story front because it was too caught up in trying to bring back the original feel and themes behind the original. The new Star Trek succeeded because they captured a modern look and feel that younger audiences could identify with, and Battlestar Galactica fell in with a fantastic look and feel, in addition to a very good story.

Scalzi has experience with reboots already, with his work on Stargate Universe, which is arguably a reboot of the Stargate franchise, of the two preceeding shows, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, which is, in and of itself, a great case study within a franchise. SG-1 worked well, for a number of reasons - great cast, momentum, fun stories, and so on, while it was cancelled because it stuck with the formula for too long. Atlantis failed for the same reason: it was too much like SG-1. This new show, Universe, has succeeded thus far because it takes a step beyond the safe territory by taking cues from Galactica. Thus far, it's largely worked, and the show is easily stronger in the story department than the original show.

This brings in the question of reboots as superior to their originals, which is a fairly ridiculous notion to begin with. Inherently, films are different because they have different stories, characters, attitudes and contexts during production that makes them largely different entities, especially where reboots are concerned (less so for Prequel/Sequels/Threequels). Because a reboot seeks to bring back an old story, but different, there really shouldn't be any sort of expectation that a prequel has been brought in only to be better than the original: it should be brought back to update the characters in a very different context, which will hopefully in turn mean that the story is more relatable to a modern audience. Hopefully, Scalzi will be able to transition this into the literary world: it should be interesting.

Caprica

The first half of the first season of Caprica just ended, and I was thrilled to see that the show, despite my high expectations, was able to meet and exceed my hopes. Over the course of the first nine episodes of the first season, Caprica managed to surprise and delight me throughout at the concept and world-building that had been put into place - the show is proving to be a viable addition to the Battlestar Galactica universe, and hopefully, will continue to do so.

Set half a century prior to the events of Battlestar Galactica, Caprica fills the role of prequel, an already daunting task for any established and successful television show, setting up two major families, the Adams (Adamas) and the Graystones. A train bombing on Caprica kills daughters of both of the houses, setting the two families into one another, and putting together a series of events that sets a chain of events into motion, which will no doubt have its own trail to Battlestar Galactica.

Battlestar Galactica largely succeeded because it was a breath of fresh air in the Science Fiction world, breaking a number of the conventions when it came to a show set in space, with combat, military operations and complicated characters. What surprised me the most was that Caprica essentially threw a lot of that out the window, and began anew, focusing on entirely different themes, thus taking the show in different directions than I had expected. Where Battlestar Galactica focused on the military, politics and humanity under pressure, Caprica has gone a completely different direction, opting to look at a digital lifestyle and religious conflict in society, and in doing so, help to flesh out a lot about the 12 colonies that were really only hinted at in Battlestar Galactica.

I like what I see, and the show has grown, in story and in its tone/feel, from that first pilot, and it has revealed a world that is really well thought out, with a number of conflicts playing into other storylines. As with Battlestar, this series remains fairly relevant to today's society, which is a major point for Science Fiction: To be relevant, in a fantastic setting. As the digital revolution kicked off in the mid-90s, society has changed a lot as a result: computers have connected us together in ways un-thought of, and brings out the best and worst in society: while major disasters bring about hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, viruses and pornography lurks in the shadows. So to, on Caprica, this sort of world and environment has prevailed, with youths looking to enact their fantasies in places where there are no consequences. An interesting quote popped up one of the later episodes, where a character wondered that even though people could act as if there was no consequence, should they? The internet is certainly a liberating tool for people, for good and bad.

Like any major change, there are reactions in society. Like terrorism has sprouted up, pushed along by fundamentalist forces here on Earth, the same too has happened here, where people have begun to strap bombs to them in order to effect some sort of political and societal change. The results are the same: innocents are killed, and people continue onwards. Caprica does a lot here to demonstrate that it is a very different show than Battlestar Galactica, and the terrorism aspect is a major point that is seen in both shows - here, there is killing on the part of political entities, to raise awareness to their causes and beliefs, while in Battlestar, there were suicide bombings as a matter of survival. In both instances, it demonstrates that there's a convoluted and chain of events, with different intentions all around. What I appreciated about the first show was the ability to cause audiences to think beyond the screen and talk and reflect on what they were seeing. Thus far, Caprica has begun to do that, although it's not quite there yet.

To be fair, the show has its flaws - some of the characters grate a bit (although one seems to be gone at this point), and the show really isn't about what I liked in Battlestar: military science fiction, with action and firefights, some of the best that I've ever seen on television, or on any screen, for that matter. I'm hoping that at some point, they'll begin to work on that sort of thing, or work it into the third major show. As much as I loved the plot and story in Battlestar, the space combat proved to be a fantastic bit of entertainment, and allowed for some of the best visuals in the genre, even out of combat.

Hopefully, Caprica will be given the chance to survive beyond its first year - there is plenty of potential for the show as a whole, and there's still a lot to talk about.

Caprica

While last week's start to Caprica, SyFy has launched its second show in its Battlestar Galactica franchise, looking to the roots of the conflict that forced out the Galactica and a small group of refugees across the stars. For me, Battlestar Galactica was an incredible effort, a show that helped redefine science fiction storytelling for the television, and did so in grand style. Following it up would be an incredibly difficult task for the show runners, given the complexity of Battlestar's stories, but also in the fact that the audience would be entering a show in which they knew the ending, and would undoubtedly disappoint some viewers with unveiling some of the more shrouded elements of the show's past. I think Caprica will be a good success for the SyFy channel, and with the pilot, they have demonstrated what is most likely the most important thing with a sequel: creating a new story and mythology, rather than trying to recreate the prior show's success by running it through a photocopier. Caprica shares some vital links to it's predecessor show, through some of the vocabulary, locations, characters (The Adams or Adama family in particular) and through one of the main elements of Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons. What impressed me the most was not so much the continuity of the two shows, but the continuity of storytelling. In the early seasons of Battlestar, critics praised the show for its examination of real life issues in a science fiction background, such as the use of torture in the midst of wartime, military and civilian relations, and the use of terrorist bombings against two sides of any issue. This was a strong element, coupled with other, loftier issues, such as gender identity in science fiction (and in television in general), religion and the responsibilities of leaders. Caprica seems poised to take the helm with this style of storytelling, and where Battlestar was a product of current events out of 2001 through 2003, SyFy's new show is the product of the past decade. Where Battlestar Galactica was primarily focused on the survivors of the colonial holocaust and their search for a new home, Caprica is not necessarily limited by those same constraints, instead able to focus on an entirely different set of issues, all the while putting forth a story that will help examine the underlying society and events that preceded the human/cylon war. From the pilot alone, it looks like there will be an entirely new set of stories to tell, themes that Battlestar never touched on, which gives Caprica (thus far) an entirely different tone and feel; themes such as religion and society, immigration and racism and the conflict between a learned, modern society and the tug of older, established belief system. All of these are stories that are highly relevant in today's society, given the hostility of extremist jihadist movements in the Middle East towards the West, but also our own societal growth spurt with the digital revolution. One scene that stuck out for me took place shortly after a train bombing killed a number of people, and brought together two families, the Adams and the Greystones, both of whom lost family members in the blast. The bomb was triggered by one of Zoe Greystone's friends, who shouts out: "The one true God shall drive out the many!". Extremism has always existed within organized religion, and it is a particularly notable topic considering the age that we live in today. This particular storyline, expanded upon in the pilot, is one that I hope will remain in the show, as the creators work more towards unveiling the vast differences in the different planets of the colonies. Already, viewers can see that there are many sides to the issue, from the legal standpoint to the cultural impact that such violence brings to the table. At some point on the franchise's canon, the colonies will be united under one government, and at this stage, there's clearly quite a bit more in the way of problems between the planets - this was an issue that was only touched on for a couple episodes in Galactica, but it seems to be brought up to the forefront, not only with the religion aspect of the show, but also with the perceptions of others in the form of racism. In this set of worlds, we see a society that is not too dissimilar from our own. While we're on only one planet, issues with race and religion are prevalent within the United States, as well as across the world, and Caprica shows us that even in space, we will be just as dysfunctional as we are on the ground. This is the primary strength of science fiction: to examine the world that we live in by taking our everyday problems and taking them out of context, putting them into new stories so that people will read or watch and think about problems in new ways. This has been a trait in the genre for a long time, and Caprica is a shining example of a continuing example of this, much as Battlestar Galactica was when it was first launched. While I still have some doubts that the show will live up to Battlestar, it's clear that it's already well on its way towards doing so, because of the changes that the show's production team have made. Where Battlestar Galactica showed us what would happen to humanity in its darkest hours; Caprica will show us what happens when we are at our best, and between the two shows, it will show us the distance that we can fall, and just how much we can lose.

Top Geek Things of 2009

Now that it's close to the end of the year, it's time to look back, like everyone else and their mother on the internet, on the past year. 2009 has been a fantastic one for all things geek. There have been a number of fantastic movies, books, television shows and so forth, as well as a bunch of things that really didn't come off as well. Here's what I've been geeking out (or complaining about) this year:

The Best:

Moon Moon is easily one of the best Science Fiction films that I've ever seen. Ever. It's been added to a very small list of films (The Fountain, Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth, etc) of exceptionally conceptualized, produced and thoughtful SF/F films out there. Moon is one of two really good films this year that I really enjoyed and for a number of reasons. The story is fantastic, playing off of common themes with new eyes, it's visually stunning and it's a largely original story, one that's not based directly off of prior works. And, it has a fantastic soundtrack by Clint Mansell.

Star Trek This appears three times on this list, because I'm still largely split over how I feel about it. The best parts of this is that it's a fantastic, visually stunning film, and really does what Enterprise and Nemesis failed to do: reboot the franchise in grand style, with over the top action, adventure, everything that really comes to mind when you think Big Budget Space Movie. The cast, pacing and visuals made this one of the most successful films of the year, and the best of the big budget films that came out this year.

District 9 When it comes to fantastic Science Fiction films, Moon and Star Trek didn't have a monopoly on this at all - District 9, coming out of San Diego Comic Con with an incredible amount of buzz and a good viral marketing campaign showed that there was still a place for an innovative filmmaker armed with a good story. The end result is a compelling take on first contact. Instead of an us against them, or invaders from outer space flick, we see refugees from outer space, with an acute political message that makes this movie even more interesting.

The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button This was an interesting film, one that got a bit of press, but wasn't a blockbuster by any means. The story of a man who ages backwards from birth, one that proved to be a powerful and somewhat heartbreaking love story leaves much room for discussion, but at points, was slow and ponderous. Brad Pitt did a fantastic job, as did the special effects artists who provided the CGI throughout.

The Magicians, Lev Grossman The Magicians was a book that came out of nowhere for me, until a Borders email let me know about it. Picking it up, with few expectations, I was enthralled with Lev Grossman's take on the fantasy world. Drawing much from C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia and elements of Harry Potter, this book looks at a boy in a magical academy in a far more realistic sense, injecting a good dose of post-college reality into a field that is often ripe with monsters and epic quests. A quest of sorts is in here, but the buildup is fantastic.

Wired For War, P.W. Singer Wired For War is a book from earlier this year that looked at the developments of robotics in warfare. P.W. Singer takes a long and comprehensive look at not only the state of robots and their use in combat operations, but also looks to how the use of robotics is integrated into wartime planning, and how this impacts command and control structures already in place. From this point, he looks to the future of warfare, where robotics will go through the next decades and what the face of futuristic warfare might look like. It's also peppered with numerous Science Fiction references. I had a chance to speak with and interview Mr. Singer, who was extremely pleasant and eager to talk about his book, and write up several major articles for io9, which was a thrill as always.

The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi Recently selected as one of Time Magazine's top books of the year, Paolo Bacigalupi's first novel, The Windup Girl is a stunning one. Taking place in the near future, in a world without oil, alternative energy has become paramount, while agricultural firms have put profit before common sense and as a result, plagues ravage the world, except for Thailand, whose isolationist policies hold back the outside world and its problems. The book covers a lot of ground, from governmental policy to corporate greed to bioethics, with a wide range of characters who all fall within a gray area. This book is fantastic, and if it doesn't win a Hugo, there's seriously something wrong with the world.

The Moon Reigns Supreme - 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 & Water on the Moon This year marked 40 years since 1969, when man first landed on the moon with Apollo 11, and with a successful follow-up mission with Apollo 12. Easily one of humanity's greatest accomplishments and it has been followed up with a number of projects. NASA found and restored footage of the landing and EVA activities, cleaning it up a little. NASA also took pictures from orbit of the Apollo landing sites, down to footprint trails with some stunning work from LCROSS. In addition to NASA's efforts to celebrate the anniversary, there were a number of other things out there. The Kennedy Library launched the website 'We Chose the Moon', which documented, in real time, the Apollo 11 mission. I listened at the edge of my seat, following along with the mission transcript and listened as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the lunar surface. Finally, Craig T. Nelson's book, Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men On The Moon, was released earlier this year to also commemorate the mission, which proved to be a detailed and fantastic read, one that helped to influence my thinking on the lunar mission. The Lunar landing wasn't the only press that the moon got this year - the LCROSS mission launched a component that slammed into the surface and let up a plume of debris - analysis revealed that there is water on the moon - a lot of it. And for all of those people who complained about this, keep in mind the number of craters that are already there.

Last servicing mission to Hubble. NASA wasn't just in the news for Apollo 11; this year marked the last servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in orbit since 1990. Despite its troubled history, the satellite has returned some of the most fantastic, beautiful and stunning images of the universe around us, and will continue to do so for a couple more years. Space Shuttle mission STS-125 was launched in May, where a new camera was placed onboard and several other minor repairs. The satellite is slated to continue operation through 2014, so don't fret yet.

James May's Toy Stories James May, one of the three presenters on Top Gear, has been doing a limited TV show on classic toys, including Mecano, Plasticine, and eventually, Lego, looking a little at their history and then building something supersized out of them. It's quite a treat to watch.

Fringe I called Fringe one of the worst things last year, but it's turned around for me. Picking up the boxed set, I was hooked. It's a bit cheesy, gory, but a whole lot of fun. Walter, weird science, teleportation and alternate universes make this show a huge joy to watch. Season 2 is proving to be just as good, now that they've locked down a story, and I'm eager to see where it goes.

Dollhouse Dollhouse debuted earlier this year with a short, 13 episode season that started off slowly, but picked up an incredible amount of steam. While it's more uneven than Joss Whedon's earlier show, Firefly, Dollhouse's better episodes help make up for the slack by introducing some of the most challenging moments in Science Fiction, and deal with issues such as the soul, personality and consent, while also offering cautionary tales on the uses of technology. Unfortunately, with the show's cancellation right as it gets good, there's a limit to what can be told, but with plenty of time for this show to wrap up all the remaining storylines, I think that this will become a cult classic.

Battlestar Galactica Where to begin with Battlestar Galactica? It's been a rush over the past six or so years, with a miniseries and four seasons of television and two movies, and like all good things, it had to end sometime. Fortunately, it ended when it was good, and while the finale garnered quite a lot of talk and dismay from some people (io9 listed it as one of the bigger disappointments), I think that it was carried off well, with a rich blend of religious allegory, action and a satisfying ending that few science fiction shows seem to get.

Kings Sadly, Kings was another short lived show that was cancelled before its time. Taking the story of David and Goliath from the Bible and updating it in a modern, alternate world with inter-kingdom politics, faith and destiny. The stories were superb, well told, with a fantastic cast. This is precisely the type of show that should have been on SyFy, especially with their upcoming show Caprica.

Stargate: Universe SyFy's latest show from the Stargate Franchise, Stargate: Universe is possibly the most interesting and compelling installment in the series. Taking the very basics of Stargate SG-1/Stargate Atlantis, this show takes more cues from Battlestar Galactica than it does Stargate. The result is a far more realistic show, with more personal stories and situations that are much darker, and more grown up from the first show.

Landing At Point Rain The Clone Wars thunders on, with mixed results, but easily the best episode that's aired thus far is Landing At Point Rain. Taking influences from Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan and other war movies, the show finally lives up to its title: The Clone Wars. There's plenty of action, less of the stupid lines and fantastic animation that really made this episode one of the most exciting moments in the entire franchise.

The Hazards of Love, by the Decemberists The Decemberists have long dabbled in interesting and wordy music, as well as fantasy, with their last album, The Crane Wife, and The Tain, but The Hazards of Love is their most ambitious attempt at a concept album to date, one with an overarching story of Margaret and William, a town girl and a cursed man, their love for one another and the Forest Queen who conspires to keep them apart. The album is filled with supernatural elements, and seems to draw from Lord of the Rings and traditional mythic stories to put together one of their best works to date. The band in concert was also a treat to see.

Do You Want To Date My Avatar? I'm not all that familiar with The Guild, but Felica Day's clever music video is hands down fantastic.

Dr. Horrible Wins an Emmy Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog was one of the coolest things to come out last year, and this year, it received an Emmy, which helps to solidify the web as a growing platform for serious and professionally produced entertainment. Hopefully, its success will mean that we’ll see smaller, independent productions going online and succeeding.

Symphony of Science Symphony of Science is a project that puts noted scientists (notably Carl Sagan) to music by using an auto tuner. The result is a series of music videos and songs that help to convey some of the beauty and wonder of physics though some fairly clever songs. I've been listening to them constantly, and as a sort of electronica style music, they're quite fun, and very geeky to listen to. Best of all, there is plans to make further songs.

Star Wars In Concert One of the most iconic elements of Star Wars isn't just the action and epic story; it's the music that it's set to. For much of this fall, a travelling show, entitled Star Wars In Concert has been travelling around the nation. Unfortunately, it's winding down, but it will likely continue into next year. The 501st was called out at most of the events, and through that, I was able to watch the show. Combining a live orchestra, clips from the movies and narration from Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), the entire evening was a fantastic experience that gave me chills throughout.

Tauntaun Sleeping Bag The Tauntaun Sleeping bag started out as an April Fool's Joke, but the demand and interest was so prevalent that ThinkGeek actually went out and made it. What a fantastic idea - I kind of want one.

Slingers The final thing on this list is Slingers, a short conceptual teaser for a show that's heading towards production. The 3 minute teaser is easily one of the best moments in SF that I've seen in a while and I've been bouncing around, positively giddy at the prospect that this might be made. It's got humor, some interesting characters and a very cool look to the future. Plus, it's a space show, and there aren't many of those around now. It left me seeing more, and I'm sure that we'll see more in the next year or so.

Meh:

Fanboys For all the hype, Fanboys was a bit of a letdown. The cancer story was kept in, but so were some of the immature and cheap laughs that brought the entire film down. It's good for a laugh, and there's a lot that went right with it, but still, I was left wishing that there was more to it, without the frat boy humor in it.

Watchmen Don't get me wrong, Watchmen was stunning. It looked, felt and acted like the comic book that it was inspired by, and the transition to the screen worked fairly well. At the same time, for all the hype that there was here, I'm not that enthused to see it more than once or twice. It's still on my to get list, but it's not necessarily a priority. I think my biggest issue with this is that it's too much like the comic book, and that the drive to make everything exact harmed the overall production. It's less of a movie than it is an homage from the director. Sin City was the perfect comic book movie, this wasn't, and it really should have been. Still, it's worth watching.

Star Trek Star Trek, one of the best, one of the eh, moments of the year. It looks and feels spectacular, but when you get down to it, there's the shoddy science, and an incredibly weak story that pulls the movie along. The story's really not what the film was about, this was a character start for more Star Trek, but for me, story is central to Science Fiction, and this just didn't have it.

9 The trailers for 9 looked great, and there was quite a bit of interest in this. I went into the theater with high expectations, and those were largely met - the film looked spectacular, and it was a fun ride, but the story and characters were pretty lacking. It needed quite a bit of story and character development that was needed, and that harmed the film. Plus, it didn't seem to know if it was a kid's movie or one for an older audience. This is probably something to rent, not to buy.

V The new V should have been great - the cast, producers and network put together a good premise, but with the first couple of episodes sped through just about everything that made the show interesting. The themes of first contact, of a ship arriving over earth with a message for peace contain so much when it comes to religion, science and society, all rich territory that could be exploited, but instead, it's gone past too quickly, with crappy teenage romance storylines. I'll probably not pick up watching again, but I'll see what's going on in the show, in case, by some miracle, it's picked up for a second season.

The Prisoner AMC's The Prisoner was another show that should have been great. The trailers presented a fantastic looking story of psychological stress with a weird desert backdrop, but honestly? I can't tell you what it was about. It was convoluted, unconnected and dull, and while it looked very pretty, and had some decent episodes, it was a pretty big letdown.

Spirit gets stuck in the mud The Spirit Rover on Mars got mired down in a patch of sand earlier this year. Put into operation in 2004, and only intended for a 90 day mission, the rover was still going strong until it got stuck. Hopefully, the boffins over at the JPL will be able to get it out and about once again, although if I remember correctly, the last thing that they were intending to try was to back it out the way it came in. I would have thought that would have been the first thing to have tried.

Google Wave - lights are on, but there's nobody there. Late this year, Google Wave got turned on, and like any major Google product with exclusive access, it was, well, popular. But nobody really seems to know what it's for, and unlike Gmail, which could be used as an e-mail client from day one, its limited access restricts a lot of what you can do with this. People aren't using it like e-mail if it was designed today; it's essentially a glorified Gmail chat window, or a really good business collaborative tool. Still, it's pretty nifty, and I really hope that they can integrate it into Gmail someday.

Worst:

G.I. Joe, Star Trek, Transformers, Terminator & Big Budget Crap I know I've singled out Star Trek a couple times here, but more than ever, especially with far superior, low budget films competing with them this year, we see once again that tons of special effects doesn't necessarily equate to a good film. G.I. Joe landed with horrendous reviews, Star Trek had a smaller plot than a television episode and Terminator: Salvation was a huge disappointment, critically. (I thought it was decent, but nowhere near as good as the trailers led me to believe). My biggest gripe is extravagant use of CGI and an over-reliance on special effects for a dumbed down audience. Among other things, Moon and District 9 demonstrated that a good looking, intelligent film could be done for a fairly low cost, and I know that I'll be going back to those far more than the others. Still, big budget summer movies aren't going anywhere - a lot of these films made quite a bit, and the jury is still out on Avatar, which drops in a couple weeks.

Karen Traviss Quits Star Wars - Twice Karen Traviss was really a shining star within the Star Wars Universe. Her first entry, Republic Commando : Hard Contact, was followed up by several very good novels, with some different and intelligent views on the Clone Wars. Then, there was a bit of a row over Mandalorians, causing her books to come into conflict with the Clone Wars TV series. Since then, there's been a bit of a row about this, and Traviss has left the universe for others, such as Gears of War and Halo, and hopefully, her other works. Karen explains everything here, and makes some good points. She will be missed, however.

Black Matrix Publishing Row With harder times coming around, some publishers found a new revenue stream: aspiring writers who have little common sense. One notable SF ones was Black Matrix Publishing, called out by author John Scalzi recently on his blog, Whatever. While Scalzi had quite a lot of very good advice in his usual up front fashion, there were a number of people who went on the offensive and critizised him as an elitist writer, issuing some of the most ridiculous arguments for why Black Matrix had been wronged. I'm not necessarily involved in either side, but Scalzi presented a reasonable argument. Why is that so hard?

The ending to Life On Mars I really got into Life on Mars. It wasn't as good as the UK version, but it was unique, interesting and divergent from it. While the show basically adapted the original show to a large extent at first, they had an interesting pace and storyline starting up, and far better than the first pilot that was shot, which was just terrible. The creators had a delicate balancing act to follow, and did a very good job with giving their characters their own personalities and stories that diverged from the UK version. Then, the show was cancelled and they ended it, and the last ten minutes of the show just dropped like a rock. Clunky, very, very poor production values that made me wonder if this was all slapped together at the last minute, and quite honestly, it dimmed the entire series for me, especially compared to the brilliance of the UK version. I'll watch the show again, but I'll be doing my best to forget about the conclusion.

SciFi becomes SyFy, nobody cares One of the biggest furies of the year was when SciFi became SyFy, and the internet erupted into such indignation that I thought the world was going to end. Quite simply, the channel changed names to create a stronger brand, not change content, and so far, they seem to be doing pretty well, with Warehouse 13, Stargate Universe, Alice and presumably, Caprica doing really well in the ratings. All of which is good, for the network to expand further and really show that geek is really in right now. While the name looks silly, it's really a superficial change. Now, if they would just get rid of wrestling. Or pick up Slingers for five seasons.

Orbiting Carbon Observatory crashes - Mission Failure This was a satellite that I tracked earlier this year while really watching the space stuff. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory was an expensive one, designed to monitor global carbon levels to get a better idea just how climate change is progressing and providing us with a very good look at just how the environment is changing around us. Ultimately though, part of the nose failed to separate from the capsule, and with the extra weight, the rocket crashed into the south Atlantic.

Heroes continues. Meh. I've given up on Heroes, after the dismal decline in quality, storytelling and characters. They should have stuck with the original plan, and killed off the first season's cast when they had the chance, instead of bringing people back time and time again. The fact that ratings are declining is just stunning to me, especially now that the show is into it's fourth season, and I have doubts that it will return. Hopefully not.

FlashForward Look, if I want to watch LOST, I'll watch LOST. I'm not going to watch a show that's a poor copy of it.

Deaths: Every year, there are a number of deaths in the geek genre/fan community. A couple notable ones were Ricardo Montalbán, who played Kahn in Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn, Michael Jackson, who's song Thriller places him on the Geek spotlight, Kim Manners (X-Files/Supernatural Producer), Philip José Farmer, author of Riverworld and numerous other SF books, Dave Arneson, one of the D&D co-founders, and Norman Borlaug, who saved the world through science. There are others I'm sure, but it's still hard to see people in the genre leave us forever.

Unknowns

A couple of unknowns for me include The Lovely Bones, Sherlock Holmes, Avatar and Zombieland, which I haven't seen, Deathtroopers, which I haven't read, and Halo ODST, which I haven't played. (Okay, haven't played much. I've liked what I've played. And the soundtrack. And the fact that the entire Firefly cast is somewhere in there)

What's coming up for next year? The new Tron movie is coming out, which I'm horribly excited for, especially after watching the trailer and then the old movie. Slingers is likely going to get some more buzz. Iron Man 2 will be big, as well as Clash of the Titans, Inception (Really want to see that one), Chronicles of Narnia 3, The Book of Eli, and Toy Story 3. Hopefully, Scott Lynch will have his third book out, and Caprica will be beginning (High hopes for that one), as well as the second half  and second Season of Stargate: Universe. Who knows what else?

But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate

I almost hardly know where to start with a review such as this. Battlestar Galactica is finally over, after an unprecedented run over the past five or so years. Over the course of four seasons, a miniseries and film, Galactica has far and above exceeded expectations, and will likely be known as one of the greatest Science Fiction television shows to appear on our screens, indeed, one of the best television programs to have ever been created. There will be spoilers for the finale of this episode, so be warned.

The final episode has come amidst years of speculation and expectations, and was something that seems almost impossible to have been able to successfully wrap up a show with so much momentum and story behind it; yet, while watching on Friday night, I found my expectations blown away and replaced with genuine surprise throughout. There were many things that I had essentially accepted would happen - I predicted that Adama would die aboard the Galactica in a blaze of glory, that Lee and Kara would be finally united, that we would have a fundamental happy ending for the show, something to redeem the last four seasons of misery and heartbreak for the colonial survivors. But, in the way that good stories often are, Ron Moore and his fantastic team of writers have crafted something more. None of those predictions happened - Adama survived (although the Galactica was destroyed, for sure), Kara and Lee go their separate ways and the result is a fulfilling end, something far better than what I had predicted.

From the miniseries, Battlestar Galactica has remained a show that was consistently good, and one that held broad appeal to a wide audience. On the surface, for the first couple of seasons, the show was mainly a science fiction adventure, with space ships, action, robots and the vague notion that the fleet would continue on towards earth, giving the show's creators an easy out once the show started to wind down. But at the end of Season 1, the seeds of something far greater started, with the discovery of Kobol, which brought the show to something much more interesting, injecting religion, destiny, fate and a number of other heady concepts into the plotlines.

The finale itself has been described as brilliant, fullfilling and uneven by a number of reviewers, and each point has its merits. The finale is indeed well done, and a fantastic end to the series, but it is at the same time uneven, with the first half essentially an entire season's work of special effects work, and some of the best action that we've seen in the entire series, from ground combat against Cavil's forces, to some spectacular space sorties (although I have to say, my favorite space battles include the Battle of the Asteroid in Season 1, and the opening battle for Season 4). This first episode essentially brings everything to an exciting head, and brings out some of the best in the most unlikely characters. Baltar has his heroic moment after his talk with Lee about his self-centered nature, Cavill agrees to negotiate, and Boomer sacrifices herself to hand over Hera. It is here that we essentially learn the nature of the shared visions between Baltar, Roslin, Athena and Caprica 6. The climax of this part helps to fulfill Kara's destiny as well, giving purpose to the song that she has been hearing, and brings the story to its natural conclusion that has been building since the miniseries: she brings the fleet to Earth. Not the bombed out and uninhabitable Earth that they discovered earlier in the season, but the Earth that we now call our home.

Starbuck has been one of show's hallmark characters since the beginning, initially, because the character had been turned from a male in the original to a female in the new version, which caused much uproar from fanboys before subsiding. Since early in the show, Starbuck has been singled out as a special character, one with a growing significance over the course of the show, the highlight of this coming with her 'death' in the Season 3 episode Maelstrom, and her rebirth at the end of the episode Crossroads.

Kara Thrace's story arc has been an interesting one throughout the show, especially between her tent pole episodes You Can't Go Home Again, Scar and Maelstrom. Her story is complex, and where it would have been easier for Moore & co. to have simply explained away her special nature as being a Cylon, they resisted this temptation and made her something more - her true nature is never explained away, but in the finale, when Starbuck simply vanishes into thin air, her true nature almost doesn't need to be explained - there is a certain mystery and allure to her character that enriches the experience, and I believe that a straightforward explanation of her character would cheapen that.

Gaius Baltar is possibly one of the characters that has changed the most over the course of the series, beginning his life as a brilliant scientist who rejects the notion of a supreme being and religion, to someone who not only accepts the idea, but embraces it and that he holds a purpose in a larger picture. He fills the role between the side of faith and religion and reason and science.

Intertwining with Balter's evolution has been the presence of model # 6, known as Caprica. For the first chunk of the series, she really only existed in Baltar's head, until later on, when the Cylons split, and a number were captured or fled to the fleet. Capica, the flesh and blood model, likewise saw Baltar in her head. Both stated that they had destinies, that they had a place in god's plan. To someone like Baltar, this provided both amusement for the audience, but also an excellent story mechanism that helped drive his character, and provided some of the initial development. In the end, this ties together with Hera's fate, as well as the hallucinations that Sharon and Roslin saw.

Hera was a central part of the story from fairly early on, and she is essentially responsible for the last story arc of the series, with her capture and experimentation, and the subsequent rescue that the remains of the Colonial Fleet mounted to get her back. This has been building from the end of Season 1, where we learned that an upcoming hybrid child would have enormous consequences for the fleet. While a lot of the fanbase suspected that there was something to this, such as that she had abilities or something along those lines, this was something more simple, more elegant - Hera united the fleet and Cylon/Human factions, and brought forth a new era on their new home.

Halfway through Season 4, Kara leads humanity to Earth, where they find it bombed out and uninhabitable, after having found Kobol and New Caprica and left them. Having left Earth for new pastures, Starbuck once again brings humanity to salvation by randomly jumping the Galactica to safety after the battle with Cavill's forces, jumping right on top of the Moon and is joined shortly thereafter by the rest of the fleet, hundreds of thousands of years in our past.

As Adama notes to Roslin, Earth is an idea, and this is their Earth. In a way, this explains why the colonists never settled on the Kobol and New Caprica after the fall - this wasn't their Earth. Obviously, the story wasn't finished, but neither location would have provided any fulfilling conclusion to the human race - neither location was Earth. Earth, in this show, essentially provided humanity with hope, a reason to continue, and a home in which the slate was wiped clean, where they could completely start over. Kobol had too much history wrapped up in it, too much blood, while New Caprica was a convenient stopping point to appease political pressures, while sporting an unpleasant climate. The second Earth, our Earth, represented everything that Kobol and New Caprica didn't - a rebirth of society. The refugees rejected technology and in essence, everything that had happened before, to break the cycle and bring about Six's conclusion that humanity would not follow the same path that is had been consigned to before.

The last five minutes of the show proves to be the most on the nose and profound when it comes to delivering any sort of message in the show, as the episode jumps forward 150,000 years to modern day New York City, while Baltar's 6 and 6's Baltar (whom we now know are Angels or similar messenger) observes that society has become decedent with commercialism and technology, much like it had before in Kobol, the first Earth and Caprica, part of the repeating nature of parts of the show's mythos: "All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again." Yet, as Caprica notes, any complex system that tends to repeat itself will have its anomalies. The real question at the end of the episode, of course, is did the colonists break the cycle, or did they merely slow it down?

The balance between science / technology and human maturity is a theme that has long been used in science fiction. Numerous writers have talked about the subject, noting that our ability to create is often not outpaced by our ability to utilize our creations wisely. Such has been the case in Galactica's world, where humans create, but are ultimately destroyed by their creations, as we see throughout the show on Capria, Kobol and the first Earth. As the episode draws to a close with Jimi Hendrix's version of All Along The Watchtower, we are treated to a short series of clips of modern day robots, which had an odd prophetic feel to it - will we, in this world, follow in the footsteps of stories past, or, will we follow in Six's prediction that we will be the anomaly in god's complex series of systems?

The episode Crossroads ended with a Galactica version of Bob Dylan's fantastic song All Along the Watchtower, and so this episode ended with Hendrix's version, playing on a boom box in Times Square. While this was a bit of an odd choice for a musical selection for the show, there are many elements of the song that make this a fitting choice, one that has a lot of meaning wrapped up within it - in particular, the imagry of a god overlooking his creation, with its subjects trying to figure things out within - this fits very closely with the show, especially with this conclusion, to the song. It is an appropriate and fantastic way to conclude this fantastic show.

So Say We All.

What is Science Fiction?

The Guardian Newspaper posted up an article about the label of Science Fiction when it comes to regular literature. Science Fiction as a broad genre has a number of connotations and images associated with it, for sure, but what exactly is the definition of the grouping?

According to Isaac Asimov, one of the greatest science fiction writers to ever live, Science Fiction is: Modern science fiction is the only form of literature that consistently considers the nature of the changes that face us, the possible consequences, and the possible solutions. (There are some other fantastic takes on this here.)

Over the past couple of years, as I have gotten more interested in the history and study of the genre, I'm leaning more towards an anti-genre sort of bias. I am a fan of the genre, and of the elements that commonly make it up - space ships, time travel, aliens, etc. What I find interesting though, is at how horror, science fiction and fantasy genres are generally grouped together, and how fans from one genre tend to be interested in the others.

According to the Guardian article, there are several authors whose books tend to fall under the SF/F genre heading, but aren't generally considered part of the genre, either by the publisher or the author. For example, the following paragraph raises some eyebrows:

"The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway has just had its paperback release, and is a tour-de-force of ninjas, truckers, Dr Strangelove-type military men, awe-inspiring imagery and very clever writing. It's also undeniably science fiction. Harkaway is an unrepentant fan of the genre, but his publishers William Heinemann have taken a lot of care not to market the book as such. Harkaway himself said in a recent interview: "I suppose the book does take place in the future, but not the ray-guns-and-silver-suits future. It's more like tomorrow if today was a really, really bad day.""

The last sentence is revealing one: "It's more like tomorrow, if today was a really, really bad day." Off the top of my head, I can list of a number of science fiction novels and films (Halting State, Children of Men, Wess'Har series, Firefly, etc), where this fits the description perfectly. Science fiction, in my opinion, is little different than most regular fiction, while just taking on a fantastic premise.

Margaret Atwood is somewhat misguided when she states: "Science fiction is rockets, chemicals and talking squids in outer space."

Science fiction is not just about rockets, chemicals and talking squids in outer space, although these can certainly be elements, but it is not the individual elements that really make up the core of a science fiction story. The core premise is the story. The best science fiction stories, the ones that hold up, are the ones that explore the human condition - not unlike most "literature". However, these elements do help to define the genre, and, if present in a story, help to define the novel. Stories with things like this are invariably labeled SF/F. It doesn't necessarily matter what the point of the book is.

Matthew Stover posted an interesting view up on a message board a couple months back:

"Literature is narrative fiction in which the author's intent is to express his individual vision of a fundamental truth of existence.

[Feel free to substitute other pronouns. I say "his" because, y'know, I'm a guy.]

The label of capital-L "Literature" is not a judgment of quality. It is a statement regarding the author's objectives. If the author's objective is simply (not "merely") to entertain or divert, the work in question is not Literature. It's still small-L literature (by definition), but that's not really what we're talking about. (I use the capital L to keep the distinction clear.)

And there's plenty of crummy Literature out there. It may be bad, but it's Literature nonetheless. "

At this definition, at a very broad angle, this encompasses a majority of SF/F genre stories, and separates out the ones that are essentially tie-in novels. The split is at the point where the view is either the author's, or someone else's. I'm content with this definition, because I've never seen the term Literature as something that automatically means quality. From there, everything can be broken down into the general elements that help to qualify the book. Science fictional type books tend to be grouped together with the ones that have the space ships, the aliens and things like that, but, above all, the story is such that the reader needs to be able to accept the premise, no matter what the story elements are. Battlestar Galactica and Firefly are two television shows that really did a good job at this - they took a situation, and focused on the way the characters reacted. Ron Moore has said that they didn't want to do a science fiction show, but they wanted a drama in space. It has science fiction elements, but that's not the focus.

Now, that might not be the main focus of these books that the Guardian has laid out, but they do contain science fiction elements. The article cites Jeanette Winterson with the following quote:

""People say to me, 'so is the Stone Gods science fiction?' Well, it is fiction, and it has science in it, and it is set (mostly) in the future, but the labels are meaningless. I can't see the point of labeling a book like a pre-packed supermarket meal. There are books worth reading and books not worth reading. That's all.""

I think she hit the nail on the head - essentially, it doesn't matter what the book's label is to the reader or storyteller - these labels seem to be more a thing concocted by publishers and booksellers in order to target certain audiences who might be more inclined to buy something with weird aliens and space ships as opposed to something else. That being said, even though Cormac McCarthy's The Road wasn't published or marketed as such, it's still gained quite a bit of a following in the SF/F genre crowd.

I'll always be a fan of the SF/F label though, despite the elitism and mockery that it might get - it's really the only genre that has a real geek following, and no matter the status that the genre gets from other authors and critics, it is still one of the sources, for me, of some of the best literature out there.

Sometimes a Great Notion

This review will contain major spoilers for Episode 411 of Battlestar Galactica. 

After 271 days, Battlestar Galactica has returned for its final ten episode arc that will bring us to the conclusion of the series. This has been a long time coming, and there has been a huge buildup of anticipation. Who is the fifth Cylon? What happened to Earth? What's up with Starbuck? What will happen next? This episode helped to answer a number of questions, but in doing so, raised more, and I suspect that the next ten weeks will be just as intense and rewarding as this episode was. It certainly lived up to the anticipation. 

In the last episode, humanity finally reached earth. Had that episode ended about three minutes earlier, it would have been the perfect end to the entire series, minus a couple of things. Humanity reached Earth; cue the dramatic and heartwarming music. Three minutes later, it all comes back down. Earth, as we find in the episode, is a wasteland. We discover that two thousand years prior, there had been a conflict of some kind, and the skeletons that they recovered were Cylon. Tyrol, Tigh and Anders begin to remember flashes of their lives on the planet, and Starbuck finds what brought them to Earth - her own Viper, with her own body in the ruined cockpit. This has a huge impact on the fleet. Moral seems to have plummeted, Roslin is depressed and burning her bible, and Duella committs suicide. And our fifth Cylon turns out to be Tigh's wife, Ellen. 

Throughout the series, I've seen just how dark the writers can make the show, even from the beginning. Lee had to destroy a passenger carrier. Cylons are tossed out the airlock, Kara is experimented on, the Cylons come and enslave humanity, and so forth, but this is easily the darkest turn, and one of the more brilliant things that they could do to the show. Take humanity's, and our entire ride, and turn it to ashes. This episode was very bleak, and I've often said that nothing can surprise me with this show any more. It certainly did, this time around, and I'm wondering where we'll go next. 

There are several storylines that have just been opened up, that we'll hopefully see some conclusions to. Will we see Ellen again? What happened to Cavill's fleet? What will Admiral Adama do with the fleet? And so forth - we have plenty of things to do with the next ten episodes. I'm especially interested in seeing what will happen with Kara's storyline, because she's been central to this entire arc, finding earth, and the shock of finding her own body on Earth, and also discovering that she is NOT the final Cylon comes as a bit of a relief and a shock, but also brings in an unknown to the series - what happened to her and her Viper? 

This episode also pulls itself into some of the things that had been said before in the show: What has happened before, will happen again. It certainly seems that there had been a massive civil war, that there were humanoid Cylons and Ellen's cryptic saying at the end of the episode: We will be reborn together, all tie in together. I suspect that we will be seeing more of this theme over the next nine or so weeks as the show wraps up. 

The episode wasn't perfect - it seemed a bit scattered to me, bouncing between a number of stories, and that could have been cleaned up a bit more. I had put my money on Starbuck's mother being the fifth Cylon, but that doesn't seem to have been the case. The worst thing, however, has nothing to do with the episode - it's back to waiting another week for Episode 412. I have high hopes for the remainder of the series, and this episode has done nothing to suppress that. If anything, it's brought my anticipation up a notch. 

But, Battlestar's back. And it's good. So say we all.

Best Television of 2008

My top TV episodes of 2008: 10 - Fringe: Pilot / Leverage: The Nigerian Job

This was a bit of a tie, because both these shows aren't all that great, but they are fun to watch. Fringe was one that I was really looking forwards to, and I've been somewhat disappointed by how it's been handled over the season that I've watched thus far. Hopefully I'll get to marathon the entire thing at some point. That being said, the pilot for the show was very fun to watch - it was interesting, had a fun concept and was so over the top that it's laughable, but again, fun. Leverage is a show that I've started watching because I like Heist shows, and this one is certainly one of the better ones that I've seen, ever since the show Smith a couple years ago. There's a fun cast dynamic and some good hooks in this episode for future episodes.

9 - Big Bang Theory: The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis I've been wary of this show until this season, and now, I've really gotten into it for some reason. The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis really takes the show away from some of the easy jabs at the characters and makes some room for some real character development at the end. Plus, the following quote from Leonard is just plain gold:

Do you know what this means? If I can get a healthy ovum, I can grow my own Leonard Nimoy!

8 - Barack Obama 30 Minute TV Spot No matter what side of the aisle you support, this TV spot was a brilliant move on the part of the Obama administration. It consumed a news cycle of talk show, talking heads and really outlined the priorities of the incoming administration and helped put Pres/Elect Obama into the lead, furthering his momentum. I personally was a supported of the Democratic Ticket, and while this TV spot showed us nothing terribly new to supporters, and essentially reiterated his position, it was a good introduction to people who still weren't sure who to support.

7 - John Adams: Join or Die The John Adams miniseries was a very well done series based off of the book by David McCullough by the same title. This pilot episode demonstrated fantastic production values and is an outstanding adaptation of history, from the characters and casting to the look and feel of the sets. These first episodes showed the American War for Independence, a crucial time in our history, in a way that has largely been glossed over in a few short lessons in school.

6 - Lost: The Constant This was possibly one of my favorite episodes of the entire series, where Desmond begins his own time jumps back and forth through. While Lost has overdone the lifes of some of the other characters like Jack and Kate, this episode really got into Desmond's head and proved that the writers could still write compelling and interesting characters, while advancing the story forward while doing so, rather than just exploition on why the characters are the way they are.

5 - Battlestar Galactica: Revelations Episode 410 of Battlestar Galactica brings the show to a point that we've been looking for for the past four years on the show : Earth. Four of the last unknown Cylons come forward to their friends, and Kara finally leads the fleet to the people, only to find a devastated landscape. There was a lot of emotion and storylines caught up here. Characters were not what their friends thought they were, and the episode represents a culmination of a number of storylines, and ends on a killer cliffhanger.

4 - Pushing Daisies: Comfort Food I'm very sad to see this show go - it's one of my absolute favorites. Comfort Food follows Ned and Olive during a cooking contest, while Chuck has brought her father back to life, at the cost of Dwight Dixon. This was the end/middle of a mini-arc, and it really does a fantastic job with both Ned and Chuck - Chuck with seeing her father return, and Ned for having his trust betrayed. And there's a Colonel who's been deep fried.

3 - When We Left Earth: Landing the Eagle / The Explorers This year was the 50th Anniversary of NASA, and to celebrate, Discovery released a documentary on NASA's human exploration of the solar system. This episode, Landing the Eagle, details the Apollo program through to Apollo 11, while The Explorers follows the remaining five moon landings. The footage here is absolutely stunning, and even includes interviews with Neil Armstrong. I get chills watching the landing.

2 - Life on Mars: Out Here in the Fields I was very skeptical about the remake, and the first pilot didn't leave me with any confidence here at all. But Out Here in the Fields, the second pilot to the UK remake, helped to allay my fears that this would be a poorly done show and showed not only could this re-make be a good one, but one that would stand on its own, with its own qualities. I can't wait for its return later on.

1 - House, MD : Wilson's Heart Season 4 of House was pretty lackluster. The change up with new staff only marginally worked, and while we saw some new characters, they're not quite to the point of Chase, Cameron and Foreman. The newcomers are interesting, but too similar, except for the fanatic character Amber, whom I can't stand. This episode made me entirely rethink her character, but also saw an incredible amount into the characters of House and Wilson. These episodes of House are the best ones, when we see real development, and it's happening fewer and further between episodes now. The last ten or so minutes of this episode are possibly the best minutes of the show that I've seen yet.

Top Geek Things of 2008

It's coming up to the end of the year, and looking back, 2008 has been a very fun year for geeks everywhere - in books, television programs and films, among other things. Over the past couple of days, I've been thinking back over the year to see what was the best and worst of 2008.

The Best:

Starbuck returned from the Grave; The Fleet reaches Earth. (Battlestar Galactica Season 4)

The third season of Battlestar Galactica was a little rocky in the middle, but the last episodes set up a real bang. Starbuck was presumably killed, only to turn up during a major confrontation of the Human and Cylon fleets. Season 4 opens even bigger, with one of the best space battles that I've ever seen. Our four new cylons are freaking out, Starbuck's back and everything culminates in the discovery of Earth in episode 10.Galactica has long been one of my favorite shows, and with a certain end point in mind, Season four was where Galactica got somewhat back onto the tracks, with a fairly tight story arc, only to get to another long wait for the final ten episodes. It's been well worth it though.

Pushing Daisies... back from the Grave, and back to it

After a long hiatus due to the writer's strike (more about that in a bit) my favorite show of 2007-2008 came back with a new set of episodes. There are not enough good things that I can say about this show. We left off last year with Chuck learning that it was Ned that killed her father, only to end up at the end of this season with him being awoken. It was another season of fantastic storytelling, character development and extremely fantastic dialog. Unfortunately, the show has been axed due to low ratings. Fortunately, Bryan Fuller will be going to Heroes for the latter half of Season 3.

Lost Gets Better - Again.

Here's the situation. LOST season 1 blew everyone away. Season 2 drove them away. Season 3 brought some people back, and Season 4, everything got interesting again. This season was the best since Season 1, in my opinion. We had several new characters (my favorite was Daniel Faraday, the physicist), and a couple people killed off. We started seeing flash-forwards, where Jack has a beard and addicted to pain pills, Hurley's in a mental institution and Sayid is channeling Abram's Alias. Oh, and they get off the island. Then the island vanishes.

I have Leonard Nemoy's DNA? (The Big Bang Theory)

This show started in 2007, where I was annoyed by its laugh track and annoying characters. But this year, I started watching it and enjoying it. While it's certainly a very stereotypical portrayal of nerds and geeks, it's fun, because the creators have put in place a series of fun characters, and the writers make some jokes that are actually funny. This week's episode was absolutely priceless, when Sheldon gets a napkin signed by Leonard Nimoy. Now, if they'll just ditch the laugh track. This show's likely to be around for a while longer - it's been getting better and better ratings as the year goes on.

Back in a Nick of Time (Life on Mars)

One of my absolute favorite shows of all time was Life on Mars. Up until this year, it was only a BBC drama, until ABC picked it up and made a pilot. That pilot sucked, horribly, so the cast was ditched, except for Jason O'Mara, and the show was redone, set in New York City, given a good cast and started up. The result? A solid TV series that's mirrored the original (but it's starting to diverge a bit now), a wonderful soundtrack of classic rock and a story that's actually interesting. I can't wait for its return in 2009.

The Joker raises worldwide GDP. (The Dark Knight)

First, there was excitement when it was announced that the Joker was going to be the villain. Then Heath Ledger signed up for the role. Then he died earlier this year after filming was completed, leaving some people to wonder if the film would be released on schedule. Then Warner Brothers covered every surface they could find with Dark Knight ads. When the film was released, it went on to gross $996,680,514 in theaters. The film was a huge success, and a fantastic film at that. It was a comic book movie with true darkness, some real symbolism and good storytelling throughout. It's a pity that we won't see Heath Ledger reprise his role of The Joker, because he's done the best portrayal of a villain in recent film memory.

I am Iron Man (Iron Man)

Before The Dark Knight blew the doors off the box office, there was Iron Man. Iron Man has long been a favorite marvel superhero of mine, and everything fell into place for this film. Good story, well directed, fantastic casting (Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark was brilliant) and of course, the Mark II set of armor. Marvel proved that they could make a good superhero movie, one that was relevant and not stuck in the low-humor that characterized other comic book adaptations. Already, I can't wait for Iron Man 2. And Iron Man 3. And The Avengers.

Eeeeevvvvvaaaaaa (Wall-E)

Pixar has released what is possibly their best film to date. (Except maybe Toy Story and The Incredibles). Following a robot far from home, Andrew Stanton has presented a film with a cute, romantic science fiction story with some social commentary (said to be unintentional) woven into the CGI. Wall-E is easily the most appealing robot since R2-D2 hit the big screen in 1977, and his antics as he's pulled along for the ride (literally) are cute, heartbreaking and funny.And with very little real dialog.

Roar. Crunch. Repeat. (Cloverfield)

Monster movies meets social networking video and America gets its own monster. This film was brilliantly shot with an extremely fun concept. A monster comes and plays t-ball with the statue of liberty, and it's caught on camera by a bunch of twenty-somethings as they escape. The project was conceived of by LOST creator J.J. Abrams, and his fingerprints are all over it. From the lack of explanation of everything to the weird stuff, this is a very fun film to watch. Rumors are that there's a Cloverfield 2 being talked about.

With My Freeze Ray I Will Stop... The World (Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog)

This project was a huge success for Joss Whedon & Co. Conceived of during the Writer's strike, Whedon presents an aspiring supervillian, Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris), his buddies and his quest to finish his freeze ray, avoid Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) and win over Penny (Felicia Day). We're treated to musical numbers, crazy plots and a fantastic venture to prove that the internet is a viable place to release content.Take a look here.

Up, up and away! (When We Left Earth/NASA)

This year was NASA's 50th year in operation, and the Discovery channel released a fantastic documentary entitled When We Left Earth that touted its major achievements and failures throughout the years, bringing viewers some of the most incredible footage of space that I've ever seen, and telling a fantastic story of how NASA has come to be, with interviews with astronauts and support personnel. I get chills when I watch it, and wonder when we'll return to the moon and beyond.

Hobbit's Labyrinth (The Hobbit)

After long rumors, production problems and drama with Peter Jackson (who directed Lord of the Rings), Guillermo del Toro signed on to direct the upcoming Hobbit film and prequel. (Or two Hobbit films?) This is extremely good news, because the people who can adequately fill Jackson's shoes after LOTR are few and far between. del Toro is the perfect director for this project, and has already proven that he can do fantasy brilliantly, with his masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth. Plus, he can play in other people's universes, as per his work with the Hellboy films. (Which weren't as good, but fun)

Watchman Trailer (Watchman)

What's called the greatest graphic novel ever is coming to the big screen, much to the annoyance of its creator, and to FOX, apparently. A trailer for Watchman aired with The Dark Knight, and it made fanboys everywhere sit up and take notice. There's still complaints about how it's unfilmable and that it'll be too short or too long, but from my eyes? This looks like it'll be THE comic book film to see next year. It looks like it captured the feel of the comic book pretty well, and it's embellished a bit to look badass. Plus, Rorschach looks dead on. Just like I thought he'd be like.

Large Hadron Collider (Science)

The Large Hadron Collider was turned on on September 10th, to many worries about the world ending. Contrary to popular opinion, the earth didn't vanish in a tiny black hole. It was set to uncover the mysteries of the universe, but then it broke down again nine days later and won't be up online until 2009. But, it's still cool!

Geeks in Politics (Obama [spiderman, conan, superman] Patrick Leahy [Batman Cameo])

There's been a lot of geekiness in politics this year. No lightsaber waving from McCain this time around, but President Elect Obama has claimed to be a big Spiderman and Conan fan, and did a superman pose in Metropolis, IL. In addition to him, VT senator Patrick Leahy, a huge batman fan, had a cameo in The Dark Knight. He's also the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ironic.

Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy (Costumes)

The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted an exhibit earlier this year (it's since closed) called Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy. It featured a number of costumes from a number of classic films, such as the original Superman and Wonder Woman films, but also things as recently released as The Dark Knight and Iron Man. The fashion section was a bit of a miss for me, but the exhibit as a whole was just outstanding. Plus, they had several original copies of Superman and Batman, Spiderman and Iron Man on display. Covered in a plastic shield of course...

Star Wars Encyclopedia (Star Wars)

Del Rey released a new and expanded Star Wars Encyclopedia this year, one that is not only complete, but still remarkably up to date. That's not likely to last as long, given how fast LFL churns out canon material, but it's a beautiful repository of information in the universe. I can spend hours just paging through reading things.

"Anathem" By Neal Stephenson

I actually have yet to read this book, but it's caught my eye, and it's made a splash when it comes to the sci-fi literary world. All I really know about it is that it takes place on an earth-like world, and doubles as a philosophical text for knowledge and religion. I'll have to pick it up, and only expand my to-read list further.

A Game of Thrones picked up by HBO (Song of Fire & Ice)

Another book that I have yet to read, but I actually own this one. HBO has picked up the book for a series. If there's one thing that HBO does well, it's TV shows, because they can pour money into them and get a good result. And, they have a good track record with adaptations, with things such as Band of Brothers and John Adams. I'll watch this when it's released.

We'ss Har Wars End (Karen Traviss)

Several years in the making, Karen Traviss has finally finished her Wess'Har Wars series with book 6, Judge. Starting back in 2003, she introduced readers to a fantastic story of first contacts filled with alien races, political commentary and expert storytelling. Judge didn't deliver quite as well as I'd have liked (It certainly wasn't the strongest of the series), it carried the momentum well, and proved to be a good read, one that finished up one of my favorite series satisfactorily. Hopefully, Karen will be back to writing hard scifi again, because she's incredible at it.

Trooping (501st)

This year I got back into trooping with the 501st Legion. All in all, I did a total of 30 or so events, ranging from small affairs here in VT to much larger ones. The most memorable ones were the Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade, Burlington Kid's Day, the Weird Al Concert,  St-Jean-sur-Richelieu Balloon Festival, Walk for Autisms, and the 2008 Woburn Halloween Parade. All my events are listed here.

With all the good things that have happened this year, there's the other side of the coin, and some letdowns, disappointments and pure flops.

Worst:

Writer's Strike

Okay, this started in 2007, but it messed up television for the foreseeable future, by ending some shows and putting others on a long hiatus that has really hurt ratings. Pushing Daisies was one casualty, Terminator was almost one, LOST was put off for a year, as was 24, and already, we're on the eve of another major strike over pretty much the same issues - internet distribution. Hopefully, some lessons will be learned.

Surviving a Nuclear Detonation (Indiana Jones)

Indiana Jones came back, and he came back bland. Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull was an impossible undertaking to fill the hopes of fans for the past twenty years. While it's not a horrible film, it's nowhere near as high quality as Raiders or Crusade (although I did like it better than Doom). There was no passion, a crazy storyline and some annoying characters. It does have its moments, but they are few and far between.

Skyguy/Snips/Roger Roger (The Clone Wars)

Star Wars was another big LFL franchise that came back this year, and while The Clone Wars certainly had its moments, even high points, this film just extends the image of money grubbing that LFL is involved with, which is a shame. There's too much bad dialog, characters and situations to make this a good part of the Star Wars universe, but the TV show has been making some improvements. The animation is stunningly good, some of the stories are actually good, but every time the battle droids start talking, I want to throw something at my TV.

Michael Crichton Eaten by Cyborg T-Rex and Flesh eating Space Bacteria from the Past.

While my interest in Michael Crichton has waned over the years as he began to write crappy books (Such as Prey and State of Fear), there's no doubt that he's shaped my reading. I'm still a huge fan of Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man and a number of his older novels. He's one of the most popular scifi authors (although he's resisted the genre title) out there with his works, most of which were made into films. It's a shame that he's passed - I was always hoping for another good story from him.

Gary Gygax failed his saving throw

Geek-God Gary Gygax likewise passed away this year, leaving behind a legacy that has shaped nerd-culture in the US forever. His creation, Dungeons and Dragons, along with co-creator Dave Arneson, was one of the defining features of geeks everywhere, something that I got into back in 2001. Along with giving geeks something to do in groups, it helped define a generation's activities, reading materials and conceptions of fantasy through to this day.

Arthur C Clarke becomes the Space Child

Arguably one of the greatest science fiction authors ever, Clarke's death hit the world hard. He helped to define the literary genre, and the actual science behind it, and was responsible for such classics as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rama, Childhood's End, and numerous others, as well as the telecommunications satellite. He will be sorely missed, and is one of the last of the golden age of science fiction to be with us.(Today would have been his 91st birthday)

CNN Hologram technology

On election nigh, CNN touted their new thing in news casting, a hologram of Will.I.Am. Looked cool, and it looked like a hologram, but it was nothing more than a lot of cameras and empty space plus some CGI. Blah. Let's see some real technology in action please.

Close the Iris! (Stargate Atlantis)

I was a huge fan of Stargate SG-1, and same with Atlantis for the first couple of seasons. This season has just plain sucked. It's a shame, because there's a good concept there, amidst the horrible characters, stories and situations. Not long now, because Atlantis has been canceled, and will be replaced with Stargate Universe next year.

Even more Confusing and Confounding! (Heroes Season 3)

Heroes Season 1 was brilliant. It introduced a new spin on superheroes, only to fall to its own success and have a fairly slow and boring second season. (To be sure, the writer's strike had something to do with it, because it got better). Season 3 was promised to be bigger and better. And it was certainly bigger, with heroes coming back from the grave, more time travel and action, but none of it really made the same impression that season 1 did. I'm still behind episodes, but apparently it's been getting better. Now that Bryan Fuller's returning to the show, can we PLEASE start off really good and get better? Please?

Weird Science (Fringe)

I was really excited for Fringe, the latest show by JJ Abrams. It was a fun concept, and had a good couple episodes at first, but just became so dull that I stopped following it. I might pick it up again at some point, but only when I can marathon the entire thing at once.

Forrest J. Ackerman Dies

Forrest J. Ackerman, one of the first science fiction fans out there recently passed away. He was a key element of the spread of science fiction fandom, and he helped to found the LA Science Fantasy Society, among other numerous achivements, as well as influencing numerous authors over his long life.

Borders Downsizes SciFi Sections

I ranted about this earlier, as did a number of authors. Borders has been downsizing their sci-fi sections. While it's understandable that they have to sell items, and that they can't put everything on the shelf, you can't predict what the next big hit will be, and you can't know that until you actually start selling things.

That's it for this year. Next year, there's already quite a bit coming up. Should be a fun year.

December is SciFi Month

I know exactly when my tastes in Science Fiction and Fantasy began to change to what they are today - December, 2003. While driving a friend up Burlington, we stopped by the University Mall in South Burlington, ostensibly to do some Christmas shopping. Earlier that week, I was reading a copy of SciFi Magazine, which had run a review of the recently released Firefly DVD set. It had an outstanding review, and with a little more followup research on Amazon.com, I was stunned to see this with a full five star review almost universally. I hadn't seen any of the show, so picking it up from the mall that day was a somewhat whim purchase. It looked interesting, and with the coming vacation, I would have plenty of time to watch it.

When I returned home, I sat down and watched the first episode. It wasn't until a couple minutes into the show, after the opening introduction that the show hooked me, hard. There was something about it - the superior CGI, witty dialog and interesting storytelling that I really hadn't seen in a whole lot of television shows before. To be fair, I hadn't really watched a lot of SciFi TV prior to this - some Stargate, some Star Trek, but not a whole lot beyond that. For the next three days, I watched the entire series, bouncing around the house humming the theme song, before telling my siblings about the show and marathoned it with them over the next couple days.

I can extoll the virtues of the show endlessly. After Star Wars, Firefly became a new series for me to completely obsess over. Watching the show from that point, and eventually watching the commentaries, I began to view science fiction in a far different manner than I had before. Whedon's technical commentaries on how the show was shot - how they did the lighting, what the dialog meant, and how the characters came to be - as well as seeing something completely different - made me begin to look at television and how science fiction should be in a far more critical level.

Shortly on the heels of Firefly came a second franchise that I like just as much - the 2003 version of Battlestar Galactica, which was released as a pilot miniseries in December. I watched it after reading several articles (again from SciFi Magazine) and like Firefly, fell completely for the show, but in a different way. Like Firefly, Galactica presented a non-conventional approach to space sci-fi with its presentation and storytelling, and I really liked that, along with the fantastic CGI, characters and stories.

Both shows are rarities in the genre. There are very few shows that have similar content, which is a huge shame. I like space ships, visiting new planets, especially in the manner that Battlestar Galactica and Firefly went about it. A third show that I came across several months later, Farscape is also up there.

The way that I viewed these shows percolated down to other elements of how I viewed television shows, movies, books and comics. I began to take in these while paying far more attention to the story, characters and the smaller details that I'd previously missed or never paid a whole lot of attention to. Instead of taking things at face value, liking things simply for the sake of liking them, a critical perspective helps to fully realize and enjoy the story for all of its points.

So, this December, I'll be back to my roots and revisiting some of my more favorite episodes. It's liely been a year or so since I've actually sat down to watch an episode of Firefly, and it's been a while since I've watched Battlestar Galactica. It will be a fitting thing to do as that paticular show draws to a close with the final season this spring.

Frackin' Hell

Battlestar's back! Finally, we've got a nice run of the nine remaining episodes for the rest of the season after another long wait and cliffhanger. After the Eye of Jupiter, Dianna's been boxed, everyone gets off of the algae planet in one piece, the star went nova, Six is on board Galactica (again), Baltar's back as well and in the brig and whee! Some of the best ground combat that the show's had was in there as well, not to mention some of those visuals.

The Dresden Files premired as well, and it was okay. Not as good as I'd hoped it would be, but it's got the makings of another fine show. As far as the book went, there's a lot of similarities, a bunch of things that are a real departure, and some things that were improved upon. Dresden himself looks the part, and he's got a better jacket than the one in the book - he seems a little more realistic. Some of the sarcasm was there, and the general Chicago environment of the underworld stuff was present. However, Bob's kinda weird, Murphy's nowhere near her character from the books (almost angry and sarcastic in the books, while she's pretty mellow here), and Dresden seems to be pretty well off, not at the complete desperate bottom-of-the-barrel that he's in in the books. Ah well, there's time for improvement.

I'm not going to continue with the weekly TV-This-Week thing, just because I don't have time. If I like a show, I'll probably gush about it. If I don't, I'll bitch. Savvy?

The Best TV of 2006

Now that Christmas is over and it'll be the New Year tomorrow, I figure I'd do a bit of looking back on things. So, the best TV of this year:

New TV

This was the year that the television networks picked up on the fact that serialized TV might sell really well. Following the sucesses of LOST and Prison Break, it seemed like a no brainer. Odd thing is, it didn't really work as well as people'd predicted. Critic favorites like the Nine and Six Degrees bombed and were cancelled, although a couple held on nicely.

1- Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - I like TV, the industry, writing, everything. I'd heard about the show earlier on in the year and thought that it sounded bad, but when I saw the pilot episode online, it hooked me from then. This show's the most important one on there. It takes on religous, governmental, politics, broadcasting theory and ethics in its episodes, stuff that you don't really see. This is smart TV. The dialogue, characters, plots, all fantastic stuff, and it's a shame that this show didn't catch on as well as it should have. Hopefully, we'll see a season 2 to this.

2- Heroes - This is a fun show. Can't take it too seriously, but it's just one of the best geek shows out there. There's a good kick back to the community with references and things like that that makes it fun to watch, as well as a really cool storyline and characters to match it.

3- Day Break - This was cancelled just the other week, which makes me very unhappy. The good news is that this show's got all the 13 episodes filmed, or so I heard, so they'll be out sometime. Detective Hopper's reliving the same bad day, and while this show couldn't last very long, it's got the strongest of all the storylines of any tv show. They should have just billed this as a miniseries or something.

TV That Came Back

Battlestar Galactica - I didn't think that it could get any darker, but it did, and man, the opening five episodes just blew my mind. There's been a couple of episodes that I wasn't thrilled with, but on the whole, Battlestar's back and kicking ass. Can't wait to see the next ten episodes. As far as Season 2 went, this year's half of the episodes was weaker than season 1 and the first half, but they really pulled themselves together towards the end.

Veronica Mars - Season 3's on a new network and doing pretty well, although they're not going to be doing an overall mystery this time around. The rape mystery was brought to a conclusion, which was pretty good, and the writing and characters are just as good this time around. Can't wait to see the next half of the season.

House, MD - House was cured! Sort of. After getting shot, he could walk for four months. Then he's back to drugs again, and he's got a cop after him, a former actor from the show Hack, who's one of the cooler new characters that's been in the show, much better than Vogler from season 1. House is sarcastic still, and downright mean at times, and they're really pushing his character around, which doesn't happen that often.

Prison Break - Okay, they broke out of Fox River, and they're on the run. A good chunk of them have been killed, right from the first episode. It was good to see the show change gears so quickly, but I don't think that this has much life left in it. While they're still alive, they're still running, and they've done a terrific job with it.

Other good ones this year - Supernatural, LOST, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis. Supernatural's gotten into more of an arc, which is interesting, and they've really forced some characterizations out of the brothers, LOST has been interesting and Stargate's really gotten into it's stride again, only to be cancelled.

Foreign TV

1- Life on Mars - Aired earlier this year on BBC1 while I was over there. I didn't catch the show while I was in England, but I did recently. It's one of the more imaginative and interestin series that I've seen, mixing police drama with science fiction and the 1970s. Brilliant show.

2 - Green Wing - This show is hilarious. Simply brilliant show, great acting, really fun sense of humor there.

Misses this year were The Nine, which should have been a movie, Six Degrees, which had an interesting concept, but handled poorly with some bad characters. Smith was promising, but it never took off, which was a shame, that one I actually liked.

In the upcoming year, I'm only looking forwards to one show, and that's The Dresden Files, airing on SCIFI in January, based off of the books by Jim Butcher. It looks really good, and I can't wait to watch it.

When We Collide

I'm going insane.

Between my mad rush to get my final papers in and my co workers at work, I think that I'm going to be insane by the end of the year. If you see a babbling idiot in the corner, that'll be me.

My final exam for Gothic lit was pushed back a day, which was nice, because I got some extra time to polish it up a little and get some things done with the assignments. I did have a scare when I went to print off my Reading Journal - turns out the copy that I was saving was somewhere else, while the one that I printed off was somewhere else. Arg. However, it gave me some extra time to slack a bit and I essentially lost a day to study for History and work on my remaining English project for American Short Stories. I'll be doing that tonight, and probably pretty early in the morning, before I go off to work.

And I have nothing against my co-workers. They're nice people, but just too damn hyper. And immature at times. It's just... arg. Too much stress to think about.

It'll all be over soon, when exams are finished on Sunday, which will be a huge relief for me. I'm more than ready for this semester to be over.

New Galactica tomorrow night, then a break. I was just reading an article on what'll be happening in the next part of the season. There's supposed to be a major death - something that'll shake up the entire season. I'm betting it'll be Starbuck, because... I have my reasons. I'm just guessing that'll be her that'll bite it. Which'll suck, because I like her, if it does happen like I think it will, and for the reasons that I suspect it'll happen.

In other news, Gateworld just announced that there's a third Stargate series in the works! Good timing too, because SG-1 is going off the air after ten seasons. AND, Jewel Straite, best known for her work as Kaylee from Firefly, will be a regular in Stargate Atlantis!

Dropping like a rock

Want to see what made Friday night's episode of Galactica so good?

Keep in mind that that's something the size of an Aircraft carrier, if not bigger, and isn't designed for atmospheres. And it's falling. There's more to the episode that's just plain awesome, but that part made everyone in the room just cheer.

Stunned...

Galactica is officially the best show ever. Resistance moving up. Adama's back. Decoy Battlestars. Raptors and vipers. GALACTICA JUMPING INTO NEW CAPRICA'S ATMOSPHERE AND JUMPING OUT. VIPERS IN ATMO. The Pegasus, oh god, the pegasus. The fleet and humanity reunited.

Best. Episode. Ever.

Major squee.