Giant Freakin Robot says fans at a convention voted J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek: Into Darknessthe worst Star Trek movie ever. The fans also anointed the Trek spoof GalaxyQuest an honorary Star Trek movie and voted it seventh on their list of favorites. With both thoughts in mind GFR passed along the latest video in the satirical “What if J.J. Abrams made….?” canon, a trailer for the Abrams version of GalaxyQuest.
First off in this reimagining, if Abrams helmed Galaxy Quest it would bear the overly serious subtitle The Omega 13 Prophecies…. You may also notice a lack of Abrams’ trademark, and oft debated, lens flare. I’m okay with that.
James H. Burns has noticed this trend of creating Trek humor at Abrams’ expense himself. When he sent me a link to the science news item titled ”At last Voyager 1 slips into interstellar space” he added, “A Star Trek, The Motion Picture PREQUEL? Just don't tell J.J. Abrams!”
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft exited the vast bubble of particles that encircles the sun and planets on August 25, 2012, mission scientists report …
NASA launched Voyager 1 and 2 in 1977 to explore the outer planets, but from the beginning Stone’s team hoped the probes would survive long enough to investigate the region of space where our star’s dominance finally wanes.
[Thanks to David Klaus and James H. Burns for the stories.]
“They wrote an awful good script,” Newhart said of his “Big Bang Theory” colleagues. “They gave me a lot of hanging curveballs and I kept swinging at them.”
The swinging paid off. When he was honored on Sunday with his first Emmy statue, Newhart humbly told reporters backstage that he “was totally unprepared for that.”
A bed designed and built by Robert A. Heinlein for himself and his wife, Ginny, fetched $2,025 at auction on eBay.
Dubbed “Heinlein’s ‘second-best bed’,” the piece came to The Heinlein Society after Ginny’s death in 2003. Unable to find a museum to take it, the Society decided to turn it into cash.
Fifty years ago Vic Perrin delivered the Control Voice when The Outer Limits aired for the first time on September 16, 1963.
I was in front of the family’s spare black-and-white TV watching the episode. Because it was an ABC network show, when he talked about controlling the vertical and horizontal, well, of course! Somebody had to do it.
But if it had been an NBC show — that was my father’s job at the network’s Burbank studio. As a video engineer he sat at a board filled with knobs and dials, not only holding the vertical and horizontal where they belonged, but keeping the peacock’s feathers the right colors.
(1) Did you know R2-D2 appeared in Star Trek: Into Darkness? For about a split second. And other films, too – even Raiders of the Lost Ark!See the screen caps here.
Stemming from a hidden message in the Atari video game Adventure, the term “Easter egg” in media now refers to a concealed joke or message in a game, TV show, or movie. As with any good Easter egg hunt, these hidden treasures are tough to find.
Preparations are underway should “Thrones” reign. “A lot of folks in the retail space, home improvement departments stores are very interested in it. A lot of other bathroom products are interested in it,” Hahn said. All that remains to be seen is whether “King of Thrones” proves successful with viewers or gets flushed away if it stinks up the joint.
And if they announce a “Blackwater” episode, look out.
So many fans, even those who’ve seen “The Empire Strikes Back” innumerable times, get that line wrong. It’s just so much fun to coo “Luuuuuuke” before launching in to the dramatic revelation. And it sounds dumb to just say “I am your father,” but if you sneak the “Luke” in, everyone knows you’re quoting the second “Star Wars” movie, and the joke works as well as a repeated-to-the-point-of-nausea line from a 35-year-old movie can.
Welcome to rural Sweden, sometime in the late ’80s. Citizens go about their mundane lives and children explore the countryside. But something isn’t quite right. Robots and hovercrafts are commonplace, and decaying science facilities sprout from the harsh Scandinavian landscape. There’s even a rumor circulating that dinosaurs have returned from the dead after some failed experiment.
This is the world that exists in artist Simon Stålenhag’s mind, and it’s only accessible through his paintings. The alternate universe he’s created is inspired by the sci-fi movies he watched as a kid growing up in the rural areas around Stockholm. As he explains to The Verge, “The only difference in the world of my art and our world is that … ever since the early 20th century, attitudes and budgets were much more in favor of science and technology.”
The goal of the Robo-mate project, with $6 million in EU funding, is a machine that could reduce the number of workplace injuries, researchers said.
Twelve research institutions are taking part in the quest for a wearable robot suit that will help human workers take on manufacturing tasks that, because of the complexity of the choices involved, are difficult to fully automate.
If the model in this article had a helmet, you could easily see it evolving someday into the gear worn by Star Wars’ Storm Troopers.
Your stories have a lot of insider jokes; there was a hilarious episode that included references to Schrödinger’s cat. How does your team know what’s funny in science?
I went to grad school in analytic philosophy, which is culturally very much like science. We talk to our science adviser, David Saltzberg, a physics professor at U.C.L.A. We visit various schools and labs.
Once we went to the control station for the Mars rover. That was the source of a number of stories for Howard.
We talked with a NASA astronaut, Mike Massimino. He told us about his Italian relatives who were unimpressed that he’d gone into space. There was one relative who was, “We usually make the new guy clean the garbage truck. You shouldn’t have to go out to the space station if you’re the senior guy.” So that became the story line for Howard. He goes into space, and no one in his daily life is impressed.
(7) Those of you who like to hum “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” will want to look over Abebooks selection of post-apocalyptic-fiction, and read the introduction by Richard Davies –
The method of worldwide destruction varies. Readers could encounter a plague, global nuclear war, biological weaponry, a comet collision, or a blinding meteor shower followed by flesh-eating plants. Many authors don’t explain in detail the nature of their book’s catastrophe but, in many ways, it’s unimportant – the thoughts and actions of the survivors are what counts.
(8) In the middle of ESPN’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback column Gregg Easterbrook inexplicably veered into a lengthy critique of NASA of which this is only the beginning —
What’s up in outer space? Not as much as expected. In the 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” by the year 2001, there are colonies on the moon, commercial flights to orbit, and NASA has built a giant ship bearing a crew to Jupiter. In this spring’s Tom Cruise flick “Oblivion,” by 2017, NASA has built a giant ship bearing a crew even farther, to Saturn. Nothing remotely like this is on anyone’s drawing board, let alone funded.
The space station continues to circle the globe, accomplishing — ahem, we’ll have to get back to you on that. This most expensive boondoggle ever is now serviced by Russian rockets at American expense.
I talked to Neil Armstrong an awful lot near the end of this life. Too bad he’s gone, because he was an important spokesman for being adverse to what the political part of NASA says we’re going to do. Bolden, let’s face it, he doesn’t know what it takes to do a major project. He doesn’t have experience with that. He’s a flier, a Marine general. He’s never known what it takes to do a massive program. He keeps talking about going to Mars in the 2030s, but that’s pure, unadulterated, BS. And what have you got if you get there? Who wants to operate something that’s 40 minutes, by voice, from the Earth. Why would you want to do that? As an operator, damned if I like that. If I’m on the moon, I’ve got a 3 second turnaround. Everything I go to do on Mars I’ve got to prepare to do in an automatic mode. That’s not very smart. Pretty much everything we need to do on Mars can be done robotically. We’ve already got robots there. By the time we get the capability to send humans to Mars, it might be that robots are smarter than humans anyway. I’m serious.
(10) One of many differences between Worldcon and Burning Man —
There was a rumor that if you safely parachuted in, you didn’t have to pay for a ticket. I also heard that not only was that not true, once they land there’s a mad dash to take off the parachute and run away before getting caught.
(11) Here is the Marty Gear tribute video shown at LoneStarCon 3.
[Thanks for these stories goes out to John King Tarpinian, James H. Burns, Michael J. Walsh and Andrew Porter.]
Sally Woehrle, Sasquan Chair, wrote online, “Bobbie [DuFault] was not only my co-chair but was my good friend. She was the person with the vision, the spirit and the persistence to win the Worldcon bid. It is ironic that after spending so many years trying to make this dream come true, it only lasted two weeks.”
Woehrle said she would continue to lead Sasquan as chair, along with her three vice-chairs, Glenn Glazer, Pierre Pettinger and Mike Willmoth.
Dan McCarthy, the grand old man of New Zealand fandom, died August 7. He was a past Fan Guest of Honour at the New Zealand national convention and a 2009 nominee for the Sir Julius Vogel Award.
McCarthy belonged to Aotearapa for 25 years. He was the apa’s official editor from 1986-1987 and 2001-2003. As a member he contributed 77 issues of his fanzine Panopticon for which he did paintings and colour graphics. McCarthy’s skills as a fanartist were widely appreciated. He won the Best Fan Artist category of the New Zealand Science Fiction Fan Awards in 1989 and 1991.
By Andrew Porter: Bob Booth, “writer, editor, publisher, founder of Necon and Necon E-Books, avid fan of horror and the written word, father, grandfather, mentor and friend,” died from lung cancer on September 7. He had been fighting the disease for eight months. Plans for a memorial service are yet to be made. Booth was also on the founding committee and board of directors of the World Fantasy Convention, from 1975 to 1990.
He is survived by his wife, Mary, children, Dan and Sara, grand-daughter Jillian, and all those who met him over the decades at NECons or World Fantasy Conventions.
Send condolences to: Mary Booth, 67 Birchland Ave., Pawtucket RI 02860, or via e-mail to Daniel Booth, <daniel.booth77 (at) gmail.com>, or Sara, <saracalia08 (at) gmail.com>.
Sad news: Bobbie DuFault, co-chair of Sasquan, the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention, passed away from unknown causes this morning, September 14.
Glenn Glazer of the committee asks, “Please respect the families’ wishes to not be contacted at this time.”
Life is far more important than fanac, of course, but it’s hard not to think of all the years Bobbie spent trying to win a Worldcon bid — and finally did just two weeks ago.
Seattle fandom endured two heart-wrenching experiences of having its 2002 and 2011 Worldcon bids collapse due to loss of facilities. Despite that, many veterans of those bids signed on for the Spokane in 2015 campaign which finally broke the curse. Bobbie DuFault would have co-chaired the Sasquan with Sally Woehrle.
Bobbie became active in fandom in 1981, first as a con attendee, then as a volunteer doing live video for Seattle area conventions.
Eventually Bobbie chaired Rustycon and C-Cubed, the Pacific Northwest conrunning convention, both multiple times. She chaired the 2005 NASFiC, CascadiaCon, and the 2012 Westercon in Seattle. She ran the Program Division for Chicon 7, the 2012 Worldcon. By her estimate, she worked on more than 150 conventions.
She was proud of her work with the Reading for the Future program which promotes the use of SF and fantasy in the classroom. She was on the board of trustees and maintained the group’s website — www.readingforfuture.com.
She lived with her husband, Jerry Gieseke, in the country with their children and grandson.
