science fiction

Chris Knight's avatar

Heh, funny. On the way to my job last night I reflected on how it’s been almost a year since the final season of Stranger Things dropped on Netflix. And I found myself wondering if there would ever be anything more of that franchise to enjoy. I’ve pretty much written off getting to see Stranger Things: The First Shadow, unless it gets a touring show (or a broadcast adaptation, c’mon Netflix we know you filmed material from it).

Well, today being Stranger Things Day – the anniversary of Will Byers first getting taken into the Upside Down – the Duffer Brothers let us know that they are far from done with that particular universe and indeed it looks like it’s set to grow even more.

Behold the reveal teaser for Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure…

GeekTyrant has a bit more about Other Worlds, which with its ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

What if the Palpatine we saw in Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker was not the “real” Palpatine at all?  What if he was some kind of replica without an iota of Palpatine/Sidious’s spirit whatsoever?

There is precedent for such a notion.

In Timothy Zahn’s two-part “Hand of Thrawn” novel duology from the late Nineties, the galaxy hears whispers about the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn.  Thrawn in the still-venerable expanded universe, you may recall, was killed toward the end of The Last Command.  The galaxy thought he was dead.  But he prophesied that he would return in ten years’ time if he ever was thought to have died.

Long story short, it turns out that at Thrawn’s hidden fortress (see what I did there?) in the Unknown Regions, the grand admiral had prepared a clone of himself.  It had been in stasis all that time.  Just waiting ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

 One of the seminal motion pictures of the science-fiction and action genres hit theaters on this date in 1986.

And it still holds its own four full decades later.  Aliens is going to prove to be as timeless as its predecessor.  I love pretty much everything about this movie.

Bit of a side note: a week and a half before 9/11 I had dinner with Jenette Goldstein, the amazing actress who played Vasquez.  She’s an absolutely delightful woman.

Happy anniversary Aliens.  And no doubt we will be enjoying you just as much forty more years from now as we do today.

 

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Chris Knight's avatar

It occurred to me that it was thirty years ago today that the science-fiction blockbuster Independence Day came out in theaters…

I saw this movie seven times that summer!  The only other movies I saw during the summer of ’96 were Twister and A Time to Kill.  And I can tell you exactly on which dates I saw Independence Day each time.

It was on July 4th that was the first time.  I was working a summer job at a bindery and we had a few days off for the holiday.  Ed, my best friend at Elon, and I caught the movie at the now-non-existent Janus Theaters in Greensboro, North Carolina.  We loved it so much that we caught it again two days later.  And then a little over a week later my friend Bennie from Belgium was visiting for a week, and we saw it together. Then a
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Chris Knight's avatar

To be honest, it’s not a notion that I’ve given any real thought to, now almost four and a half decades since first seeing E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.  It’s the suggestion that maybe, just maybe, E.T. and Elliott had a happy reunion many years later, when Elliott was all grown up.  Might the heart-burning alien who found his way everywhere in 1982 (or at least all over your own house especially when you had small children… and let’s not forget the Atari game!) have made a return to Earth?

It’s a question that Steven Spielberg himself has now addressed.  Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast to discuss his new movie Disclosure Day (a friend said it’s worth seeing especially for John Wiliams’s score), Spielberg shares about whether Elliott and his pal had a reunion…

“No, never saw him again,” he said.  “But he did dream about him.  So

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Chris Knight's avatar

This is… I mean, just… HOLY CRAP!  This is NOT a good thing.

And it even looks like a Cylon, too.

 

That’s “Gabi”.  He… I mean, IT… is in Seoul, South Korea.  It just took vows to be a Buddhist monk at a special ordination ceremony.

Here’s the story from UPI about the Cylon Buddhist monk.

And here is video of Gabi going through the paces of being a holy droid:

 

As good friend of this blog Geoff Gentry pointed out, at least the Cylons from the 2003 version of Battlestar Galactica  were monotheistic.  That is true.  But for such a construct it’s only going to be a matter of time before the leap is taken from programmed zen to actively believing in a singular God.  And when the things start assuming through their AI superiority that THEY are closer to God than frail and fallen humanity ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

 

This is great!!  One of my favorite movies of all time.  In fact, I watched it this past weekend as the ice was beginning to fall.  It’s a tradition I have whenever there’s a winter storm that’s trapping me inside the house.  This film is such a favorite of mine, that it’s one of a few that I always keep loaded on my iPad.

John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing is one of the new inductees on the National Film Registry.  This year’s class also includes Inception, The Karate Kid, Glory, and The Incredibles.  The Truman Show and White Christmas made the list too.

In adding The Thing to the registry, the Library of Congress said this of the movie: “Moody, stark, often funny and always chilling, this science fiction horror classic follows Antarctic scientists who uncover a long-dormant, malevolent extraterrestrial presence. ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

As of tonight it has been 120 hours since the series finale of Stranger Things dropped on Netflix.  And in that time the Internets have been going full-blown wacky with theories and speculations.  It’s the kind of debate and discussion that I can’t remember seeing in a very long time, at least not since the Lost finale almost sixteen years ago.

I have now watched “The Upside Down” twice all the way through and numerous bits and pieces of it since it went live on streaming.  And I thought it was the most beautiful thing that I’ve seen on the television medium in quite awhile.  But if you’ve seen it also, you’re well aware that it left a few things dangling.  Not “critical” information, but we are certainly teased a bit about what becomes of these characters who we’ve followed for almost a full decade.  The Duffer Brothers, the creators ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Way, waaaaay back in 2011, I posted about how a bunch of good-hearted geeks pitched in more than $50,000 to crowdfund a statue of RoboCop for the city of Detroit.  I’ve wondered about this project at various times over the years (mostly whenever I’ve watched RoboCop, which hasn’t been too many occasions) and I certainly did wish them well.  But it still seemed like one of those great ideas that linger around but ultimately get nowhere.

Leave it to nerd-dom to prove this cynic wrong.

Behold the brand new $60,000 bronze statue of electric fuzz in stainless steel:

Click to enlarge.  Photo credit: Lee DeVito

Detroit Metro Times has more here about the RoboCop statue.  Maybe they should invite Paul Verhoeven and Peter Weller for the official dedication?  I’d buy that for a dollar!...

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Chris Knight's avatar

 I say FORGET IT!

From the good ol’ days when a Doctor Who Christmas special really MEANT something.

I shall properly preface this post by noting that when the franchise has gotten so bad that Disney+ has washed their hands free of it, you know things are dire and not apt to get better anytime soon.

The BBC announced today that Doctor Who is still viable somehow and that there will be a Christmas special next year.  But according to the article, Russell T. Davies is still in charge of the show.

Like I said, forget THAT!!

As long as Davies is calling the shots, this show is dead and it’s not regenerating.  Although I will confess that the twisted little “id” creature within me is harboring morbid fascination about what the ’26 Christmas special will entail.  Because the last time we saw anything of Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa’s ...

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