WARNING: If you’re a Star Trek/sci-fi fan like myself, have tissues handy; the prospect of interplanetary travel becoming a reality might make you a little teary-eyed.
Isaac Asimov in a letter of advice to Gene Roddenberry on how to get audiences to focus on Kirk AND Spock instead of just on Spock who was considered a “fad-character” (albeit a wonderful one) who brought in the “teenage vote”.
Seriously just read the whole thing, it’s fantastic.
(via Letters of Note: Getting Star Trek on the air was impossible)
“If a story begins by showing us a wizard, we understand immediately that we will see wizards and magic. If a story with no magic introduces a wizard with no hint that magic was coming, the audience rightly feels cheated.”
I literally could not have said this better myself. It’s a long article, but if the ending to BSG made you as angry as it made me, it’s worth reading.
CHARLIE BROOKER, talking about the dangers and non-dangers of Nautilus, “the computer that predicts the future”.
Of course, I picked the quote about Star Trek out of a much longer essay, but the rest of it is interesting and definitely worth reading.
But you can’t judge a book by its cover, dammit!
In actuality, the grave seriousness of Animorphs is what stands out most in my memories. This isn’t 10,000 pages of kids turning into butterflies. It’s a 10,000 page chronicling of war, and the central themes of the series are appropriately aligned with that subject matter. Once you’ve suspended your disbelief and firmly settled yourself into the bizarre sci-fi nature of the material, what you’ve got is five teenagers who struggle with things like dehumanization, the responsibility or leadership, sanity, insanity and morality. It is told with the horror of actual war, where the battle is not only physical, but mental as well. Is it right to kill unarmed enemies? Is it right to ask a team member and friend to carry out a dangerous mission? Is it right to retreat, to continue, to do anything?
Horrible things happen with surprising frequency in this series. Characters you’ve grown attached to have mental break-downs, crumble under the pressure, cease to be heroes. In fact, a lot of this series serves to debunk childish notions of battle and war as being something magnificent and heroic. The battles that are fought are not great feats or victories, but rather a series of jumbled, confusing actions that leave regret and sickness in the hearts of those who fought. Each decision, whether in the heat of battle or for the greater good, comes later to haunt the character who made it, and they forever feel the weight of their actions and their own short-comings.
via Why Animorphs is possibly the greatest sci-fi story ever told.
@TheRealNimoy: 45 years ago. The start of an amazing voyage. Thanks to all for the support for so long!! LLAP
Inspired the invention of the cell phone.
First interracial kiss on TV.
Tackles social issues through diplomacy from the perspective of a post-scarcity society.
Star Trek is the thinking-person’s Sci Fi.
Then you have George Lucas’s weird religious space opera. Star Wars has more in common with L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth than it has with Star Trek.
Reblogging again for Chris’s added and accurate comments.
Geek Wisdom by Stephen H. Segal | Quirk Books [via Reddit]
”[…] These beloved pearls of modern-day culture have been painstakingly interpreted by a diverse team of hardcore nerds with their imaginations turned up to 11. Yes, this collection of mini-essays is by, for, and about geeks — but it’s just so surprisingly profound, the rest of us would have to be dorks not to read it. So say we all.”
Ughhhhh I want this so bad. Why is it only available as an eBook? :(
Movie Trivia with Kate Costello: A Modern Day Sci-Fi Homage
In today’s episode of Movie Trivia, Kate tests your knowledge of alien flicks. From Sigourney Weaver to Will Smith, how well do you know your UFO movies?
Just saw this movie last weekend and loved it. Definitely one of the best films I’ve seen this summer.
Wow. I can’t believe we have to wait for the fall for answers!
“With his recent appearance on Doctor Who, Mark Sheppard cemented his place as science fiction’s greatest character actor. But we’ve been loving Sheppard for years…and we assembled this video of every last one of his scifi roles to prove his awesomeness.
This covers the greatest Sheppard moments, from his recent appearances on Warehouse 13 and Supernatural to his early work on and Star Trek: Voyager. It’s eighteen years worth of larger-than-life performances, snarky banter, and moral ambiguity, complete with at least a half-dozen different accents, multiple threats of bodily harm, and a couple of the most ridiculous face prosthetics we’ve ever seen.”
♥ Brilliant.
So, I remember reading about LGBT and science fiction many moons ago, but I did not make the connection until re-reading it now.
Theodore Sturgeon wrote many stories during the Golden Age of Science Fiction that emphasised the importance of love, regardless of the current social norms. In his short story “The World Well Lost” (1953),[c] first published in Universe magazine, homosexual alien fugitives and unrequited (and taboo) human homosexual love are portrayed. The tagline for the Universe cover was “[His] most daring story”;[30] its sensitive treatment of homosexuality was unusual for science fiction published at that time, and it is now regarded as milestone in science fiction’s portrayal of homosexuality.[31] According to an anecdote related by Samuel R. Delany, when Sturgeon first submitted the story, the editor (John W. Campbell) not only rejected it but phoned every other editor he knew and urged them to reject it as well.[32][33] Sturgeon would later write Affair with a Green Monkey, which examined social stereotyping of homosexuals, and in 1960 published Venus Plus X, in which a single-gender society is depicted and the protagonist’s homophobia portrayed unfavourably.[22]
I went to his page and saw…
Sturgeon wrote the screenplays for the Star Trek episodes “Shore Leave” (1966) and “Amok Time” (1967, later published as a “Fotonovel” in 1978). The latter is known for his invention of the pon farr, the Vulcan mating ritual, the first use of the sentence “Live long and prosper” and the first use of the Vulcan hand symbol. Sturgeon also wrote several episodes of Star Trek that were never produced. One of these was notable for having first introduced the Prime Directive.
>wrote Amok Time
>created pon farr
by the power of ten.
(via fuckyeahspacehusbands)
For the starship captain’s log entry narrations, Roddenberry wanted to devise a futuristic measurement of time reference. He called (Sam) Peeples (whom Roddenberry had contacted early on for help in learning about science fiction, a subject he knew nothing about; it was Peeples who wrote “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” the pilot that sold ST). The two men had a few drinks while brainstorming, and soon began chuckling over their imaginative ‘stardate’ computations. ‘We tried to set up a system that would be unidentified unless you knew how we did it,’ Peeples says.
“They marked off sections on a pictorial depiction of the known universe and extrapolated how much earth time would elapse when traveling between given points, taking into account that the Enterprise’s warp engines would be violating Einstein’s theory that nothing could exceed the speed of light. They concluded that the ‘time continuum’ would therefore vary from place to place, and that earth time may actually be lost in travel. ‘So the stardate on Earth would be one thing, but the stardate on Alpha Centauri would be different,’ Peeples says. ‘We thought this was hilarious, because everyone would say, “How come this date is before that date when this show is after that show?” The answer was because you were in a different sector of the universe.’
Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek
They made the ST universe’s time system arbitrary on purpose! These guys were trolling Star Trek nerds before they were Star Trek nerds.
(via edvaliant)
I really enjoy that they put all of this thought into it
Also I feel compelled to share that my first thought on learning about relativity was “Star Trek was wrong…”
(via badparsiqueer)
(via sadspockpanda)
The History of Science Fiction (click to enlarge)
[/r/scifi via brainpickings.org]
Rebecca. 24. Pittsburgh/NYC. Deputy Editor at Upworthy. Nerd. Feminist. Comedy fan. TV enthusiast. Ally. Hoping to make the world a better place by blogging in my pajamas.
![Geek Wisdom by Stephen H. Segal | Quirk Books [via Reddit]
”[…] These beloved pearls of modern-day culture have been painstakingly interpreted by a diverse team of hardcore nerds with their imaginations turned up to 11. Yes, this collection of mini-essays is by, for, and about geeks — but it’s just so surprisingly profound, the rest of us would have to be dorks not to read it. So say we all.”
Ughhhhh I want this so bad. Why is it only available as an eBook? :(](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lptuz2lt0K1qbrzrzo1_250.jpg)
![The History of Science Fiction (click to enlarge)
[/r/scifi via brainpickings.org]](http://www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/wardshelley_scifi.jpg)
