Science Fiction

"First Look" Clip from Megalopolis.

In 1950, a U.S. Army psyops officer named Paul Linebarger used a pseudonym to publish a science-fiction story titled “Scanners Live in Vain” in a pulp magazine. It was about a man named Martel who works for the “deep state” in the far future as a mysterious “scanner,” or starship pilot, and whose mind is manipulated by evil bureaucrats. After a new technology called a “cranching wire” restores his true senses, he recognizes that his bosses within the government order a hit on anyone who challenges their control of space travel and the economy. Martel ultimately joins an insurrectionary movement aimed at overthrowing the regime.

Editor's Note - so happy to see Annalee Newitz writing for the Atlantic!

Located primarily in cyberspace, Sistah Scifi is among the first Black-owned bookstores focused on science fiction and fantasy in the country.

What are you doing to celebrate #Maythe4th?

Hollywood must be afraid of Einstein considering how few movies seriously address the theory of relativity. Here are the ones who actually face the cold truth about space travel.

The Xenomorph might be one of the best monsters in movie history but the real terror in Alien comes from the company Weyland-Yutani.

Despite having lost three of her shipmates to an alien invader she doesn’t understand, despite learning that her shipmate and science officer Ash (Ian Holm) is an android, despite nearly getting killed when Ash tried to shove a porn mag down her throat, it’s something else that truly disturbs Ripley in Alien. It’s the two words she saw in a message from her employer: “crew expendable”

With those two words, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) realizes that she’s at the bottom of a food chain, and not just because there’s a bloodthirsty Xenomorph on board. Never one to portray businesses or anyone with power in a favorable light, Alien director Ridley Scott took writers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett’s idea about a haunted house movie set in space and turned it into a screed against the ruling classes.

By focalizing the adventure through the perspective of working-class space truckers, Alien transcends its sci-fi horror trappings to become a statement on the predatory nature of modern capitalism. It’s commentary that not only remains relevant today but that makes Weyland-Yutani one of the most frightening corporations in all of sci-fi history.

Godzilla Minus One, the highly anticipated kaiju film from director Takashi Yamazaki, has finally arrived, and it's a monster hit. Premiering on December 1,

Scientists disagree about the brain size and intelligence of Tyrannosaurs and other large dinosaurs.

Wesley Crusher is right up there with Scrappy Doo and Poochie as far as hated fictional characters, and Wil Wheaton knows exactly why.

This has a lot in common with science fiction, a genre full of thought experiments that ask Heinlein's famous three questions:

What if?
If only, and

If this goes on…

These contrafactuals are incredibly useful and important. As critical tools, science fiction's parables about the future are the best chance we have for resisting the inevitabilism that insists that technology must be used in a certain way, or must exist at all. Science fiction doesn't just interrogate what the gadget does, but who it does it for and who it does it to:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/20/love-the-machine/#hate-the-factory

One of science fiction's key methods comes from sf grandmaster Theodore Sturgeon: "ask the next question." Ask a question, then ask "what happens next?" Do it again, and again, and again:

It's a slightly click-baity title, but as we're still generating more content for our magazines, this one included, why not?

Unpopular opinions from last time include:

• My Sci-fi unpopular opinion is that 2001: A Space Odyssey is nothing but pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense.

• I could not get into the expanse at all.

• My unpopular opinion is that I don't like space operas.

What's yours?

Come for Edgar Allan Poe's gothic classic, stay for 21st-century gay revenge horror by Wendy Pini of "Elfquest" fame.

'Stellar Blade' delivers a narrative that will make you question what it really means to be human, while also requiring split-second timing in battle if you want to live to tell the tale.

How did a terrifying alleged incident involving "real" extraterrestrials inspire Steven Spielberg to create the cuddly E.T. and Poltergeist?

Anya Taylor-Joy's Alia will presumably have a much bigger role in Dune: Part Three, but adapting this Frank Herbert character won't be easy.

Sci-fi fiends have a long history of saving their darlings. Francis Ford Coppola’s epic “Megalopolis,” 40 years in the making, could be their biggest save yet.

The Tomorrow Prize and The Green Feather Award: Celebrity Readings & Honors will take place May 11. The Omega Sci-Fi Project’s culminating event recognizes outstanding new works of science fict…

'The Matrix' defined cyberpunk for a generation, but it's Cronenberg's grotesque vision of the future, released just weeks later, that will haunt you long after the credits roll.

There’s a case to be made that the Xenomorph is the greatest movie monster ever conceived. It’s certainly among the most iconic. H.R. Giger, the Swiss artist who designed the title creature of Alien, took inspiration from Francis Bacon and Rolls-Royce, and emerged with a biomechanical killing machine that’s instantly identifiable in silhouette. Cross a tapeworm with a shark, a cockroach, a dinosaur, and a motorcycle, and you’re close to describing the nightmare Giger and director Ridley Scott inflicted on unsuspecting moviegoers in 1979.

A monster so unforgettable sells itself. One look is all it would take to know that you had to see the cursed thing in action. And yet, there’s barely a glimpse of the alien in any of the original advertising for Alien. The beast is completely absent from the posters, and the trailer contains only a borderline-subliminal flash of its earliest larval stage, the face hugger. Unless you subscribed to a select few science fiction fan magazines — the ones boasting some enticing behind-the-scenes images, all part of a final “hard push” to get asses in seats — you were going into Alien blind, completely unprepared for the exact nature of the threat faced by its cast of unlucky galaxy-traversing characters.
Restraint isn’t unheard o

BAFTA Award-nominee Callum Turner (Masters of the Air, The Boys in the Boat) is joining Neuromancer, a new 10-episode drama based on the sci-fi novel of the same name by William Gibson.

Created for television by Graham Roland (Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan) and JD Dillard (The Outsider), Neuromancer follows a damaged, top-rung super-hacker named Case (Turner) who is thrust into a web of digital espionage and high stakes crime with his partner Molly, a razor-girl assassin with mirrored eyes, aiming to pull a heist on a corporate dynasty with untold secrets.

Neuromancer was Gibson’s debut novel that earned a Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It served as the first book in the Sprawl trilogy and was followed by Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive.
The series will be a co-production between Skydance Television, Anonymous Content and Apple Studios. It will also be produced by Drake's DreamCrew Entertainment, with Roland serving as showrunner and Dillard set to direct the pilot episode.

Neuromancer will be executive produced by Roland and Dillard, alongside David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Matt Thunell for Skydance Television; Anonymous Content; Drake, Adel ‘Future' Nur and Jason Shrier for DreamCrew Entertainment; Zack Hayden and Gibson.

Apple TV+'s adaptation of the Blake Crouch novel stars Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly, and premieres May 8.

Before there was Blue Beetle, there was The Guyver.

Friendly aliens, adorable moppets, and breathtaking special effects—what's not to love about Spielberg's first big-budget science fiction film?

Bill Skarsgård plays a martial artist out for a revenge in a flashy but insubstantial pop culture potpourri directed by Moritz Mohr

Elliot Page is bringing this fan-favorite sci-fi novel to the big screen. Will the actor deliver the next big sci-fi franchise in Hollywood?