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10 Favorite Faux Deaths In Science Fiction [The Walking Dead]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:00:11 -0800

Death really isn't the end in science fiction... It just depends on whether or not it can be written around later. Here are some of our favorite NotDeaths that prove that the Grim Reaper should really up his game.

Spock
Died: Sacrificing himself by bringing the warp engines back online at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, leading to his dying from exposure to radiation.
Undied: His body was resurrected in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock thanks to the Deus Ex Machina powers of the Genesis Planet, and it turned out that his soul had lived on all along thanks to mind melding with Bones.
Cause of Undeath: Mind-meld and blatant plot ridiculousness in order to keep the fans happy. Admittedly, it was all set up in Star Trek II, but still.
Does It Count As Death?: Well, his soul was alive the entire time in Bones, but his body had enough time to go through a funeral and being shot off into space, so... 50/50? But not really, let's face it.

Ellen Tigh
Died: Poisoned by her husband after (in his eyes) betraying humanity in "Exodus, Part II" at the start of Battlestar Galactica's third season.
Undied: Instantly downloaded into a new body as part of the Fifth Cylon retcon, as revealed in the fourth season's "Sometimes A Great Notion."
Cause of Undeath: Traditional cylon download/rebirth.
Does It Count As Death?: Well, she was instantly reborn, which suggests that she was never actually dead as such, but the whole Fifth Cylon thing muddies the waters... especially when she was reborn as someone who wasn't exactly the Ellen she was when she died. We're going with "Kinda, but not really."

Boba Fett
Died: Falling into the Sarlacc's mouth in Return Of The Jedi.
Undied: Climbing back out of the Sarlacc's mouth in comic sequel Star Wars: Dark Empire.
Cause of Undeath: He was swallowed by apparently never chewed or digested and climbed his way out, apparently.
Does It Count As Death?: If you believe Dark Empire, not in the slightest. George Lucas apparently disagrees, however; it's said that he edited Fett's last appearance in the special edition of Return Of The Jedi to make it clearer that it's meant to be the end of the character.

John Sheridan
Died: Avoiding certain death by nuclear explosion at the end of Babylon 5's third season finale, "Z'ha'dum," by jumping into a pit so deep that it was impossible to survive. Oh, and then there was that nuclear explosion, which presumably would've destroyed the pit and everything within it anyway.
Undied: At the start of the show's fourth season, Sheridan was revealed to be in a limbo between life and death because of his love for Delenn. With the help of - and 20 years worth of lifeforce from - helpful fellow limbo-ite Lorien, he comes back to the land of the living.
Cause of Undeath: As Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting would say, choosing life. Who knew it was that simple?
Does It Count As Death?: Nope. Think of it as getting as far as death's foyer, before deciding to turn back because you'd changed your mind.

Tasha Yar
Died: Wanting out of her Starfleet contract early, Denise Crosby got her character killed at the hands of a gloopy, ooky oil monster in the first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation "Skin of Evil."
Undied: Thanks to time travel shenanigans, turns out never to have died in the alternate timeline of third season episode "Yesterday's Enterprise," and then manages to return to the past of the original timeline at the end of the episode in a way that still doesn't make a lot of sense.
Cause of Undeath: Alternate timelines having prevented her from dying in the first place.
Does It Count As Death?: Well, a Tasha Yar definitely died. In fact, as we learn upon the appearance of the second Yar's daughter Sela, the other Tasha was killed unsuccessfully trying to escape from the Romulans, so it looks as if any and all Tashas would end up dead one way or another.

Superman
Died: At the hands of the apparently unstoppable Doomsday in 1993's The Death of Superman storyline.
Undied: Midway through the follow-on The Return of Superman storyline, when it's been revealed that none of the four characters who've taken up the mantle are the real thing.
Cause of Undeath: He woke up. No, really; the audience is pretty much told that he'd never died in the first place, he'd just gone into superhibernation in order to heal from the fight.
Does It Count As Death?: Not at all, but it definitely counted as a moneyspinner for DC Comics, who went on to kill Green Arrow and Green Lantern within the next couple of years, as well as teasing deaths for the Flash and breaking Batman's back.

Bucky
Died: Trapped on a bomb that mentor and Nazi-fighting partner Captain America had managed to jump off of before it exploded, as explained way back in 1963's Avengers series.
Undied: In 2005's "Winter Soldier" storyline of Captain America, where he got reintroduced and prepped to become the new Captain America in 2007.
Cause of Undeath: Turns out that Bucky was, in fact, blown to bits by the exploding bomb... It's just that they were pretty large bits. Large enough to rebuild him into a brainwashed no-good commie assassin who gets put on ice between missions, until he meets Cap, goes rogue, remembers who he is, and then uses his mighty Russian technology for the good of American mankind.
Does It Count As Death?: What's brainwashed Russian assassin for no?

The Flash
Died: Which one? Barry Allen died in 1985's Crisis On Infinite Earths. Wally West disappeared and was, at various times, presumed dead/missing/no-one could make up their mind in 2004's Infinite Crisis, and Bart Allen kicked the bucket in 2007's The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13.
Undied: Wally came back in 2007's Justice League of America #10, Barry in 2008's Final Crisis #1 and Bart in 2009's Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #4.
Cause of Undeath: Both Barry and Wally had, it turns out, never died. Barry had been swallowed into the Speed Force, which is the cosmic... thing... that gives all super-speed characters their powers in the DC Universe, while Wally's fate was ultimately (after a couple of failed attempts that were quickly contradicted) decided upon a variation of "He took his family on vacation to an alien planet and didn't tell anyone." Don't ask. Bart, meanwhile, did die, kind of... but his teenage self was trapped in a futuristic lightning rod and then magically released in the 31st century to fight Superboy Prime. Again, it's probably better if you didn't ask.
Does It Count As Death?: No question for either Barry or Wally (No), but Bart... I have no idea. I've read Legion of Three Worlds multiple times, and still don't understand the explanation that's given there; let's just never mention it again and pretend it didn't happen.

Jason Todd
Died: As the result of a real-life phone vote to see if Todd, the second Robin (as in Batman and), should be killed at the hands of the Joker. Seriously, 1988's comic industry, what the hell were you thinking?
Undied: 2004's Batman revealed that Todd was not only not dead, but had magically aged more than most other characters in the DC Universe in his off-panel absence.
Cause of Undeath: Superboy was punching the walls of reality, and things went a bit weird. You know how it is with these superheroes and their punching the walls of reality; history gets rewritten all over the place. Just be glad that Batman didn't end up as Batdinosaur. Although, now that we think about it, that'd be awesome.
Does It Count As Death?: Magically contradicting Schrodinger and his cat, Jason Todd both did and didn't die. His official history has it that he died, and then just came back to life thanks to the punching of reality, meaning that he was still alive. So, while it ultimately doesn't count as permanent death, there was a death in there somewhere.

Jean Grey
Died: In 1980's famous Uncanny X-Men #137, where she sacrifices herself for the good of the universe to stop herself from becoming overwhelmed by the godlike power she possessed that might lead her to eat a couple of planets if she got peckish.
Undied: It's revealed in 1986's Fantastic Four #286 that the Jean Grey who killed herself was never actually Jean Grey at all, but the Phoenix force, who's been cosmically imprinted with Jean's personality. Don't worry; the Phoenix force was already back by that point anyway.
Cause of Undeath: Jean hadn't died (at that point), and the resurrection of the Phoenix force was somewhat implied by the name - The official explanation was that the Phoenix force hadn't actually died either, just lain dormant until someone else (Jean's daughter from an alternate timeline. If you don't already know, don't ask) claimed it.
Does It Count As Death?: Before the retcon and ruined Chris Claremont's X-Men once and for all you bastards, it did. Now? No-one died until years later, when Jean really got the Phoenix power and then ended up dying anyway. Guess there's something unlucky about the name or something.

In Space, No-One Can Hear Us Squee [Aliens]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:00:26 -0800

Fanfiction comes in many shapes and sizes, but rarely does it look as cool as Paul Mayberry's wonderful Alien short. Someone, please let this guy go a full-length Aliens comic sometime soon (Click through for the rest). [LJ] (Via)

Is Thursday The New Friday? [Tv Deathwatch]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:00:09 -0800

With Smallville's ratings on the rise, it looks like we may have found a show that survives the Friday Night Death Curse, and just in time: Now it's looking like Thursdays are also nights that will kill our favorite shows.

Both Fringe and FlashForward are seeing ratings in a worrying freefall right now; Meredith has already reported that Fringe was being considered a show in "trouble," but that was before the audience dropped a worrying 23% for this Thursday's episode (In its defense, many people may have been unaware that it was even on; a lot of schedules didn't list the episode, instead telling viewers that it was the seventh game of the World Series). Seeing a less dramatic drop, but still something that's started rumors of a lack of second season renewal, FlashForward slumped even further this week and, as TV By The Numbers showed, continued a speedy decline in the number of viewers each week towards the point of no return.

We already know that Thursday is a packed night of television, but is it so packed that it's going to kill shows we love (or, in the case of FlashForward, like enough to keep watching and hoping for the best)? Or will the success of the V premiere remind networks that Tuesday night is always an option?

Introducing An Ancestor Of The First Space Elevator [Power Beaming Challenge]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:00:54 -0800

Only four years after it was first created, an annual competition set up to promote wireless energy transfer in hopes of speeding the creation of a Space Elevator has finally managed to give out one of its two cash prizes.

The Power Beaming Challenge was founded in 2005 (and seeded with $2 million in prize money by NASA) to discover the remotely-powered robot that could best ascend a cable as quickly and safely as possible; this year's winner, built by a team from Seattle's LaserMotive, was the first ever to complete the climb at a speed greater than 2 meters per second, and therefore the first to win one of the Challenge's two prizes (The remaining $1.1 million is for any robot that can climb faster than 5 meters per second; the top speed of LaserMotive's robot was 3.9 meters a second).

While the space elevator dream remains a long-term dream, NASA say that there are much closer goals for wireless power beaming, including powering solar powered lunar vehicles when they're in areas where solar energy is unavailable.

'Space elevator' wins $900,000 NASA prize [New Scientist]

New Official Posters For Wolfman Make Us Drool [The Wolfman]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:00:05 -0800

The first teaser posters for Joe Johnson's The Wolfman (Released February 2010) are out, giving glimpses of Benicio Del Toro's hairy alter ego and Emily Blunt's damsel in distress. Click through to see them.

[Ain't It Cool, Cinematical]

Are Nanoparticles Unsafe? [Nanodeadly]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:00:31 -0800

Nanoparticles don't need to come into actual contact with human DNA in order to affect them, according to new research carried out by British scientists. Does this mean our miniature future is more dangerous than first thought?

The Guardian reports that scientists from the University of Bristol placed cobalt-chromium nanoparticles on one side of a cellular barrier specifically grown for the experiment, with human fibroblast cells on the other side of the barrier. Despite the nanoparticles not actually coming into contact with the fibroblasts, the fibroblast DNA was, on average, "10 times more damaged" than under control conditions as a result of the experiment; according to Patrick Case, who led the tests:

When we measured the damage on the other side of the barrier, to our great surprise, not only did we see damage on the other side of the barrier but we saw as much damage as if we'd not had the barrier at all and had put the materials in contact with the cells underneath.

The results raise questions not only about how damaging nanotechnology may be in practice, but also about the validity of the experiment. In addition to being unsure how the test results would transfer to a human body, Case admitted that the tests also used an amount of nanoparticles thousands of times higher than anyone is likely to come into contact with in reality:

We used high doses of them because we wanted to make sure that the dose we used would cause damage to cells if the cells were exposed.

So what we're left with is the possibility that nanoparticles may be damaging to human DNA, and that they also don't need to come into physical contact with the DNA in order to damage them... But we don't know for sure. Am I the only one not comforted by this?

Nanoparticles could damage DNA at a distance, study suggests [Guardian.co.uk]

3-D Model Of Lee Harvey Oswald's Head: A Setback For Conspiracy Theorists [Conspiracy Theories]

Charlie Jane Anders — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:00:00 -0800

For decades, JFK conspiracy theorists have claimed this photo of Lee Harvey Oswald holding a rifle and a Marxist newspaper was a fake. Dartmouth College digital forensics expert Hany Farid built a 3-D model of Oswald's head and proved otherwise.

Actually, Farid says you can't prove a photo is real, but he did knock down one of the main arguments that the photo was faked: People claim the light sources hitting Oswald's face are all wrong, proving it's a paste-up job. But Farid painstaking mapped all the light sources in the picture and compared them against his model of Oswald's head. According to the Union Leader:

He used a computer program Facegen, to build a virtual 3D model of Oswald's head. Once that was completed, he added in the background features of the photo. Through a series of computations, he figured out where the camera had to be, the trajectory of the sun and where Oswald was in relation to the camera.

After that, it was many a sleepless night Farid said, trying to match exactly the shadows to those pictured in the photo...

Farid said given the technology available 46 years ago, there is no way someone would have been able to get the internal and external elements of the photo just right in order to fabricate not only the one photo, but two others in the series.

[Union Leader]

Nature Reclaims a Post-Apocalyptic Disney World [Concept Art]

Lauren Davis — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:00:00 -0800

Epic Mickey's stylized concept art is a mecha-filled vision of the Disney apocalypse, but Alexis Rockman's paintings take a more natural view of a post-human Disney World — and imagines other cities and monuments long after we're gone.

[Alexis Rockman via {feuilleton}]

Disney World I
Disney World II
Capitol Hill
Church and White
East 82nd St.
Gateway Arch
Hollywood
Hollywood at Night
Hotelscape
Manifest Destiny
Mount Rushmore
Miami
Vie en Rose
Washington Square

Bombs, Cities Drop On Marvel Universe In New Siege Trailer [Siege]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:00:22 -0800

Have all Marvel's comics for the last five years been leading up to one massive event? If so, is said event an Avengers reunion, or dropping a mythical city on a real-life American one? A new trailer teases both outcomes.

Marvel's latest teaser for their December-launching Siege storyline (Officially, the series launches in January, but December brings a prologue issue, Siege: The Cabal) suggests that not only has everything in the publisher's recent history been leading up to their new return to happier times, but also that voiceover artists can get bored every now and again.

Marvel's official PR for the event:

SIEGE is coming! It's all been leading up to this universe shattering four issue limited series from the superstar team of Brian Michael Bendis and Olivier Coipel! Following the events of Dark Reign: The List, Norman Osborn sets his sights set on Asgard and nothing will stop him from completing his mission. But what does he want? How do Loki and Thor figure in? And just how does this relate to the inner strife between the Cabal? Marvel's greatest heroes unite against the deadliest threat they've ever faced, but even they have no idea what's coming next. It's time for the most jaw dropping comic book event of the decade begins in December with Siege: The Cabal and continues in January's SIEGE #1!

West and Schaffer Are In The Doghouse [Doghouse]

Joel Meadows — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:00:01 -0800

Earlier this year, Dogwitch creator Dan Schaffer and Razorblade Smile director Jake West teamed up for Brit horror flick Doghouse. We talked to them to find out more about the indie movie that satirizes British lad culture.

io9 caught up with West and Schaffer at the Groucho Club in London's Soho, to chat out about the genesis of the idea of placing a gang of guys in a small village in the English countryside where the women in the aren't quite right…

So how did Doghouse gestate?

DAN SCHAFFER; The real genesis for Doghouse was because I'd been getting a lot of hassle for writing female lead characters all the time especially from my Hollywood contacts. They kept saying to me ‘we don't want to sell these female leads, write something with a male lead' and I kept telling them ‘I don't want to do that' because I like strong women. But while I was sitting there with my girlfriend, who was ill at the time with a stomach bug; she looked like a zombie! She basically dared me to try and write something with guys so I said I could only do it if I really ripped the piss out of them and did it as a satire. So I was sitting there thinking ‘You look kind of freaky, you'd make a good villain.' She suggested: ‘Why don't you do a girls vs guys kind of thing?'

How did you get involved with it, Jake?

JAKE WEST: I met Dan through a journalist who interviewed me for [earlier movie] Evil Aliens. She was a friend of Dan's and she told me that I would love his comic Dogwitch. So she gave me copies of that series and it clicked with me immediately. In fact, Dan wrote a screenplay for Dogwitch first but I told him that, to do it justice, we would need between 10 and 12 million pounds so if he could come up with something less ambitious that would cost less to shoot, I would direct it. So he wrote Doghouse.

Dan, were you ever worried that the audience would miss the point you're trying to make with Doghouse?

DS: If your audience misses the irony or takes this film at face value as a celebration of laddism, then what they're going to see is the opposite of what it's really about, so yes it was a concern.

Doghouse is out on DVD in the UK now and may get a US theatrical release in 2010. Jake West also runs boutique DVD label Nucleus Films with Marc Morris: www.nucleusfilms.co.uk

5 Comics You're Not Reading (But Should Be) [Essential Reading]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:00:38 -0800

You're not new to comics, but you've read all the big names and you're not sure where to go next. Luckily, we're here with five suggestions to make your November bookshelf that little bit heavier.

Magical Realism
Air
What It's About: At its heart, Air is a love story between Blythe - a flight attendant who's afraid of flying - and Zayn, who is as much a mystery to himself as everyone else. But Air is much, much weirder, and more interesting, than that: For one thing, Blythe is a natural hyperpraxis pilot, which means that she can travel to places, times and ideas that don't, theoretically, exist... a skill she's honing with the help of Amelia Earhart, who by the way is still alive. For another, there's a war brewing between terrorists over control of the skies, and for a third, certain people may be very interested in that whole "hyperpraxis" thing. A series that's gentle, human, full of wonder and emotion, and at times just beautiful, Air is unlike most comics - and television shows and movies, for that matter - out there.
Where To Start: Two collections are available, Letters From Lost Countries and Flying Machine. Pick both up; the series is great, but the first collection (Letters) stops at a frustratingly bad point, and you need to read the second to fully appreciate what's going on.
Click here for a preview of Air.

Post-Invasion SF
Resurrection
What It's About: We've all seen stories about aliens invading Earth, but what happens after they leave? FlashForward producer and Green Lantern movie scriptwriter Marc Guggenheim's series starts with that idea and spins out a series that's part Y: The Last Man, part Lost and all-over fascinating. Why did the aliens invade? Where did they go? No-one knows yet, but considering they've left behind technology and even one of their own, you can sure that we'll probably find out somewhere down the line... but along the way, you can get sucked into the more down to earth stories of the humans left behind. Even if one of them is former president Bill Clinton, who was revealed to be more alive than everyone thought at the end of the most recent issue.
Where To Start: There's already a collection of the first black and white series out there, but we'd actually recommend waiting until the start of next year, when the 368 page Resurrection Vol 1: Deluxe Edition, featuring the complete first series and the first seven issues of the current series, hits the shelves.
Click here for a preview of Resurrection.

Urban Fantasy
Locke & Key
What It's About: Ignore the punniness of the premise - The Locke family move to the family estate of Keyhouse, wherein there are magic keys that can do various weird and wonderful things, which puts them right in the middle of some bad things that're about to happen - and instead, embrace and enjoy those weird and wonderful things that the keys can do: like open doors that turn people into ghosts or even open their own heads so that you can reach in and take out unpleasant memories. Mixing horror, fantasy, comedy and family drama and featuring moments that are genuinely unsettling, Locke & Key deserves all the praise it's gotten, and a lot more.
Where To Start: There're two collections out already; Welcome To Lovecraft and Head Games. Start at the beginning (Lovecraft), bearing in mind that Head Games is the better, and also the more freaky.
Click here for a preview of Locke & Key.

Nostalgia Done Right
Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka
What It's About: A reimagining of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (with some nods to his other work thrown in), Naoki Urasawa's Pluto is inventive, dramatic and in almost every single way, a lesson in how to take reboot and update an old concept the right way. Instead of retreading the old status quo, the series centers around robot detective Gesicht, who's investigating the murder of various high profile robots around the world... Murders that may have been committed by another robot. Even if you don't get sucked in by the economy and subtlety of the writing, there's no way you could fail to admire Urasawa's amazing artwork.
Where To Start: Unsurprisingly, Vol. 1. The seventh volume of the series is due in January, but that's still too far away; when you finish the first volume, you'll be hooked and get through the other five in days.
(No preview available, due to licensing issues. Sorry.)

Crime/Romance/SF/Everything
King City
What It's About: I've written before about Brandon Graham's stunning future crime book, but now that it's being re-released in an easier-to-find serialization by Image Comics, I'll use the opportunity to gush again; the bastard child of an orgy that included Moebius, Vaughn Bode, Jamie Hewlett and Osamu Tezuka (and maybe a little Alex Toth, come to think of it), King City is the tale of one thief, his broken heart, his cat that can literally do anything if given the right drugs, werewolves with war trauma, stolen organs, sidekicks in wrestling masks and pretty much all that's good in the world, all wrapped in something that takes noir's cliches and gives them a makeover laced with enough absurdity and love that it all seems new again. The whole thing manages to be both laid back and electrifyingly kinetic, and your heart will break for multiple reasons while reading it. Really, really worth tracking down.
Where To Start: The serialized reissue is on #2, so picking up back issues from the start really shouldn't be a problem. The original Tokyopop release may offer more story in one sitting, but the Image re-release comes with bigger pages and brand new material to accompany the serialized reprint.
Click here for a preview of King City.

The White House On V: What Aliens? [Political Science (fiction)]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:00:49 -0800

Even though V's very own Morena Baccarin is denying it, there are still those who think that ABC's new alien drama is little more than a thinly veiled attack on President Obama. But what, exactly, is the White House reaction?

Surprisingly, the issue was raised with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs earlier this week, as Mediaite's Tommy Christopher risked lizard attack by asking whether or not the President had a statement on the issue:

Tommy Christopher: Robert, I have one question and one clarification. First, the new TV series on ABC, "V," a lot of people are talking about how this show draws very strong –

Gibbs: I got to tell you - I'm going to start with this: I don't want to give anybody the impression I have time to watch anything other than what most of you all do each night. So I can't even tell you what that is or what it's about. If that makes me fairly un-cool, I tend to watch more "SpongeBob" than "V."

Tommy Christopher:There have been a lot of news stories about this –

Gibbs: Makes me a hit with one six-year-old, and that really is all that counts.

Tommy Christopher: You haven't seen the news stories about how this show compares your administration to the alien invaders? (Laughter.) Seriously, really, you haven't heard about it?

Q: He couldn't admit it if he had. (Laughter.)

Gibbs: Because there's a chip in the back of my head that requires me - (laughter) - I don't mean to - I honestly - I got to tell you, I spend - I watch a little football on Saturday, a little football on Sunday, and a lot of news every other time.

Q: Get a life. (Laughter.)

Q: (Inaudible).

Gibbs: Pardon me?

Tommy Christopher: Fourteen million people watch it, and the show –

Gibbs: And clearly, me not being one of them. Again, I –

[Cross-talk.] (Laughter.)

Gibbs: Hold on. I'm not entirely sure who I'd check on since I don't watch the show.

Tommy Christopher: Well, check with the President, see if he has a reaction –

Gibbs: I will assume that the President watches –

Tommy Christopher:– comparing him to a space alien.

Gibbs: What's the - which would probably, like, be one of the least worst things he's been called today.

The exchange ended with Gibbs being promised a tape of the show to review from ABC's Jake Tapper, which, if nothing else, should give ABC something new to promote the show with next week: "Officially screened at the White House at request of the President!"

Here's hoping that his often-discussed love for sci-fi will get him through the derivative hour without being too distracted by a cast that includes Firefly, Dollhouse, Lost, The 4400 and Smallville refugees.

White House Is Thus Far Unaware Of Comparisons To ABC's Hit Show ‘V' [Mediaite]

Meet The New HD Space Invaders [Space Invaders]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:00:20 -0800

Wondering what Space Invaders would look like in the real world? This Threadless t-shirt by Jean Salamin reveals all. We're surprised that they're spaceships and not just weirdly shaped aliens, but we kind of like it. They're Real [Threadless]
(Via)

Did Meteors Cause Life On Earth? [Origins Of Life]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:00:38 -0800

Are asteroids responsible for the creation of life on Earth? Recent experiments back up a theory that the basic ingredients for life came from beyond the stars... which makes us all aliens. Battlestar Galactica was right!

Scientists have long thought that the Earth wasn't formed with a lot of organic matter, due to the planet's proximity to the sun, but were unsure where we got the necessary chemical compounds for life to thrive on the planet. Now scientists believe that the answers may lie on meteors and comets passing through Earth's atmosphere.

New Scientist reports on experiments carried out by Peter Schultz of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and Seiji Sugita of the University of Tokyo, Japan, which suggest that, although organic compounds on the objects would get burned up on atmospheric entry, that's not the end of the story. Schultz:

The idea in the past has been, 'Any of this stuff coming through the atmosphere would be heated to the point where it would get wasted... What this new work did was to show that we might actually revive these compounds.

What Schultz and Sugita believe is that the flashes resulting from objects burning up on entry produces cyanide, which they believe could have reacted with the Earth's already existant compounds to form more complex, carbon-containing molecules that would ultimately prove essential to Earth-based life. It's not as dramatic as cylons and humans landing on our planet, but it's a possible answer to a long-standing question... and an appropriately cosmic origin for life on the planet.

Was life founded on cyanide from space crashes? [New Scientist]

Spider-Man Musical Pulls Itself Together, Slowly [Spider-man]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:00:40 -0800

The permanently troubled Spider-Man musical took a couple of steps in the right direction towards being able to open yesterday; not only did the show get a new lead producer, but an actor was finally announced to play Peter Parker.

With a budget estimated to be somewhere in the region of $50 million already, and a weekly running cost that may be in the budget of $1 million a week, Julie Taymor's musical version of Marvel's superhero may be too expensive to be allowed to fail. That might explain the addition of Michael Cohl as new lead producer. Cohl, a music industry veteran and former chairman of Live Nation, brings with him experience with ridiculous demands for stage sets and dealing with budgets out of control. Although it likely had nothing to do with him, the announcement on the same day that the show has found its Peter Parker in Reeve Carney, who has previously worked with Taymor on her movie version of The Tempest, does at least give the impression of the show slowly coming together.

Sadly, it's looking increasingly unlikely to come together quickly enough to make the projected February 2010 opening date; rumors are now that people should expect a midyear premiere.

'Spider-Man' lands producer, Peter Parker [Variety]

JJ Abrams Gets Small For Micronauts Movie? [Micronauts]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:00:38 -0800

A month after we ask Hollywood to consider the potential of a movie based on 1970s toyline Micronauts, news comes from an unlikely source that they've heard us, and are talking to JJ Abrams to make it happen.

The news broke in The Wall Street Journal, of all places, in a story about toy lines being co-opted by movie studios:

J.J. Abrams, who created the TV show "Lost" and directed this summer's "Star Trek" film, is in discussions to produce a movie about Japanese toy line Micronauts, which Hasbro just acquired.

With Abrams producing, that opens the door for some Kurtzman/Orci involvement, if they could be convinced to jump from the Transformers franchise into another toy universe. We're really keeping our fingers crossed for comic artist and Micronaut lover Paul Pope getting involved on the design side, though.

The Cry Goes Out in Hollywood: 'Get Me Mr. Potato Head's Agent!' [Wall Street Journal]

Sinister Forces Will Torment You With "Gray's Anatomy" on "Supernatural" [Supernatural Recap]

Annalee Newitz — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:30:44 -0800

This week, Supernatural took us into the dark heart of darkest evil. The brothers are trapped . . . in an episode of Gray's Anatomy! And a bad sitcom. And a bad CSI spinoff. And yes, it was awesome.

Thursday night's "Changing Channels" was a tip of the hat to the culty 90s John Ritter movie Stay Tuned, where a poor sod (Ritter) is sucked into his tube and must endure a hell of genre television shows. The episode begins with a fantastic sendup of sitcom credits and opening dialogue, complete with laugh track. Watching Sam and Dean ham their way through a wacky-doo apocalypse scenario is fun partly because it reminds you how goofy Supernatural already is.

But when the boys find themselves in a version of Gray's Anatomy called Doctor Sexy (complete with plinky girl rock), everything starts to get ugly. A trickster that the boys have tangled with before shows himself, admits he's playing a game with them, and then a disgruntled patient shoots Dean. Things really get ugly when the newly-patched Dean is sucked into a Japanese game show where he and Sam have to answer questions in Japanese to avoid having mallets smash into their balls.

When Castiel arrives in the game show but can't use his powers to rescue them, the brothers realize that the trickster is far more powerful than they expected. Earlier, Sam begged the trickster to help them stop Armageddon, but the possibility that he will help is getting slimmer and slimmer. The trickster seems both more hostile and more powerful than what they'd expected.

After uncomfortably mouthing their way through genital warts commercials, more Doctor Sexy, and a completely silly sendup of CSI Miami, the boys are getting desperate. As long as they stick to their roles, they manage to survive each show. But the trickster is getting creepier, and banishes a beaten-up looking Castiel again before the Winchesters can do anything about it.

Turns out that the trickster is using the TV torment to teach the boys that they have "roles to play," as the vessels of Michael and Lucifer - "your celebrity deathmatch," he clarifies. When the brothers refuse, he banishes them to a stint on CSI Miami, and Dean fumes, "I hate procedural cop drama!" Things get even worse when the boys stab the trickster with a stake - which should kill him - and find themselves weirdly thrust into a Knight Rider episode where Sam is KITT. At last the brothers connect the dot: The trickster's obsession with the boys becoming angel meatsuits makes it seem like he might be an angel.

So Dean captures the trickster in a ring of burning holy oil. And wouldn't you know it - he reveals that he's been the semi-fallen angel Gabriel all along (which is kind of a retcon since we saw this character before and he came off as a regular old trickster).

"Where'd you get the holy oil?" Gabriel asks.

"You might say we pulled it out of Sam's ass," Dean growls. Ah, the KITT jokes just keep on coming. This show rules.

Like all the angels, Gabriel is stick of living in a world where his brothers are killing each other and his father is MIA. He just wants to get the whole Earth enema over with. "What you guys call the apocalypse I used to call Sunday dinner," he yells. "This is about two brothers betraying each other." That's why two troubled brothers have to play their roles as angelic sausage casings.

"I wish this were a TV show . . . easy answers," Gabriel adds.

I like the bittersweet final moments of "Changing Channels," where the nightmarish torture that is television turns out to be better than a real world where angels are trying to kill each other. Then, after Gabriel whines some more about how there is nothing the Winchesters can do about the apocalypse, Dean gives him the total armchair psychologist smackdown.

"This is about you being too afraid to stand up to your family!" he shouts at Gabriel.

As we learn more about the deep game that is Armageddon, it's becoming obvious that heaven was some kind of hippie fascist dictatorship, where a loving Father expected unquestioning obedience from his loving children. The angels are all like recovering abused children, or maybe badly-deprogrammed cultists with no direction now that their charismatic guru is gone. It's an interesting interpretation of Heavenly politics, and provides a nice counterpoint to Sam and Dean's own family traumas.

Another way to look at this episode is as another chapter in the "meta" arc that's being developed this season. The meta episodes began with "The Monster At The End of This Book," an episode last season where the brothers discovered that a prophet/genre writer has been chronicling their lives in a series of books called Supernatural. Since then, the brothers have met fans of their books, and even discovered Wincest fanfic online. Supernatural is a show that constantly comments on its own fandom, and in this episode it comment on the kinds of television that inspires fandom.

These fan-loved shows offer a glimpse of a simpler world, one that even angels yearn for when times are tough. But the trouble with TV is that it's always locking people into narrow roles that leave no room for choice. In the Supernatural metaverse, television is our salvation - and our prison.

A Fly-By-Night Operation Is Even Harder If Your Plane Is Solar Powered [Future Transportation]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:00:00 -0800

Inventors rolled out this prototype of a solar-powered aircraft today. The Solar Impulse will fly for the first time in December and make a 36-hour flight in 2010. And in 2012, a larger verison will fly around the world.

Solar Impulse is the Swiss bid to make the first Solar-powered flight around the world. The prototype is an ultralight single-seater with the wingspan of an Airbus A380, with four sun-fuelled electric motors. According to Solar Impulse co-founder Andre Borschberg, it's lighter and better performing than comparable gliders.

These photos show the plane being rolled out for the first time ever, and fitted with its vertical stabilizers. Isn't she beautiful?

The big challenge will come in Spring 2010, when the solar-powered craft's 36-hour flight will include flying all through the night. Images by AFP/Getty. [AFP]

Portrait of a Polluted Land [Megapollution]

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:25:29 -0800

NASA's Aqua satellite captured this image of a massive smog bank smothering huge portions of China today. This blanket of pollution has been hovering over the country for over a week now, exacerbated by cool air and smoke from fires.

According to NASA, whose researchers first wrote about this lingering smog bank on Oct. 30:

A temperature inversion may be responsible for the build up of pollution over eastern China. Normally, air cools with altitude, but occasionally, a layer of cool air will be trapped beneath a layer of warm air. Since the cool air is more dense than the air above it, the two layers don't mix and pollutants build up in the cool air near Earth's surface.

Temperature inversions develop most often during the winter, when long, cool nights chill the ground. The cold land cools the air nearest the ground, leaving the air at higher altitudes warmer. The two layers of air do not easily mix, and the temperature inversion can last for days if winds are calm.

So far it has lasted for more than a week. Is this the future of weather?

via NASA

"The Box" Contains A Conspiracy Wrapped In a Mystery Wrapped In 70s Retro [Movie Review]

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:56:38 -0800

Richard Kelly, director of Donnie Darko, has manufactured another dream of paranoid moral confusion with his latest film The Box. An uneasy tale of alien technology and human greed, The Box is science fiction done the emo way. Spoilers ahead.

Based on 70s short story by Richard Matheson, who also wrote I Am Legend, the movie's central premise is simple. A strangely-disfigured man named Arlington offers a strange proposition to a young family. If they press the button on a box he leaves with them, somebody they don't know will die and they will receive $1 million in cash. School teacher Norma and her NASA engineer husband Arthur aren't sure what to do when the mysterious Arlington leaves them to make their decision. Is the box a hoax? If not, is it bad to kill somebody they don't know if it means they'll have enough money to continue their comfortable, middle-class existence?

With Arthur's dreams of becoming an astronaut dashed (he failed the psychological test), and Norma unable to continue getting a discount for their son at the fancy private school where she teaches, money has recently become a source of anxiety for the couple. So Norma decides to press the button, though Arthur is immediately upset that she does it.

Once this fundamental plot point fades into the narrative background, cult auteur Kelly is free to do what he does best: Get weird. He slowly builds a portrait of suburban life haunted by a mystical military-industrial complex ruled by aliens and spies. Another NASA employee's wife is brutally murdered while their daughter cowers upstairs, and Arthur suspects it's because of Norma's button pushing. Meanwhile, people with nosebleeds are spying on the couple, as well as speaking in portentious tones about "going into the light."

Arlington continues to keep them under surveillance, and they discover that he's actually with the NSA. He built the box after being struck by lightning and mysteriously brought back from the dead. And it all has something to do with the Mars probe Voyager that Arthur helped design.

The movie is packed with the memorable, strange imagery that is Kelly's trademark. Boxes made of water hover in the air, a perfect recreation of a low-tech 1970s library becomes a haunting maze, and the NASA sets are lovingly rendered, complete with retro computers and lens flare. And the eponymous box itself is designed like some kind of Cold War objet d'art. Balanced atop a 70s-style wood panel box is a big red button that looks like it could launch nukes.

Kelly manages to weave together mystical moral issues with government conspiracies and godlike alien intelligences, but the result is uneven. It's hard to sympathize with a comfortably middle-class couple who are willing to kill somebody just so they can continue to live in a giant house and send their son to private school. And the moral universe Kelly has created in The Box is woefully black-and-white: Either you push the button and you're bad, or you don't push it and you're good. I kept waiting for Donnie Darko to step out from behind a curtain and yell at everybody for trying to reduce all human problems to the bland binary of "fear" vs. "love."

We also discover that the button is always pushed by wives, which suggests that women are the culprits holding humanity back from achieving the level of moral goodness that the aliens require in order to spare us from annihilation.

Despite these problems, there were flashes of goofy brilliance in The Box. Especially in the woefully short segments where we see Arlington's mysterious laboratory, located in a wind tunnel that the NSA has requisitioned from NASA, we get a glimpse of a truly great science fiction story. Arlington and his "employees" are a more deeply strange and stylized version of characters from Fringe, and that's a good thing. There's an especially great moment when one of Arlington's puppets returns to the alien spy installation at a tiny freeway motel, which is packed with other alien-controlled people and partly papered over with tinfoil. There's even a cheesy motel pool that's been improbably converted into an alien portal.

Kelly is at his best when he's making mind-melting science fiction with allegorical underpinnings, but unfortunately The Box is more like a morality play with a few science fiction characters hanging around in the background. Making matters worse is that the moral here seems like easy, unimaginative misanthropy. Unlike Kelly's previous films, which bristle with complicated hopefulness in the face of horror, The Box paints a simplistically dark picture of humanity. Despite the best of intentions, women keep pressing that button again and again - putting their families in danger, and dooming Earth to a harsh judgment from the godlike aliens.

Why are such complicated characters doomed to be inserted into narrative boxes that only clumsily contain them? Unfortunately, The Box doesn't answer that question.

Roland Emmerich's 8 Rules For Ending The World [2012]

Meredith Woerner — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:38:30 -0800

Director Roland Emmerich knows how to blow humanity to smithereens. He did it in Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow and now 2012. We talked to the apocalypse-master himself, who explained that there are 8 simple rules for ending the world.

Make It Impossible

The first rule to come from the director was, make it impossible....

The rules are — what I always say but people forget — the pictures have to be super impossible. I'm only interested in doing the impossible image. That's really hard to explain. But one of the first things I saw in my mind, was the ground opening up. And I realized what that means, when the bottom falls out under your feet.

So far that sounds exactly right as just about every single scientist and critc has said that the general ideas behind these disaster movies are, literally, impossible. But come on — who doesn't want to see people running from frost?

Stick To What You Know: You Can Always Blow Up The White House Again

[If you are going to destroy something] It has to be very original, otherwise you don't do it. I remember at one point [during 2012 production] we were discussing what will happen with the White House [in 2012]. I said, "What should happen? I cannot destroy the White House again." And Harald [Kloser, screenwriter] said, "Well you have to, if you don't destroy it people will have the same question. Just come up with something new." ... I thought I could have this object crashing into the White House, because we knew that in one of the first waves we'd have to put objects in it so you could see how big it was and thought maybe tankers or war ships. Then we came up with image of [the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy crashing into the White House, which is like] JFK returns to the White House. I was reading about the Kennedy family a lot at the time and thought that was sort of ironic and interesting in a way.

You gotta respect a man who made a career of blowing up the White House, so much that if he doesn't do it we wonder why not? But honestly, we're running out of cities for this guy to destroy, and yet he still manages to crush them differently each time. One has to wonder if he'll be able to come up with more after this last disaster.

The More Characters The Better

Multi characters help you a lot because you can constantly keep the story moving. And people from all walks of life. Every audience member has different people they like in the movie and will follow them. These movies are so expensive that they have to work for pretty much everybody. For young people, for men and women. old people probably like Danny Glover, and Harry and Tony, the Jazz musicians. Kids get wrapped up in our two kids. Create characters so everyone in the audience has an identification figure.

I guess that means my character in 2012 is Woody Harrelson the conspiracy blogger, cause I like cartoons and pickles too. Look at me, I'm bonding with the story! Still I'd like to meet the people that relate to beautiful Vivca Fox, the heart-of-gold stripper who loves dolphins and has a Fighter Pilot for a boyfriend.

Superheroes Aren't Half As Cool As Earthquakes, Tornadoes And Waves

Who wants character-driven movies about confused anti-heroes in a near futuristic world fighting Oscar-winning villains? Not me. Give me Will Smith punching aliens and Bill Pullman's president speech any day.

Look at it like this. I'm a person who doesn't like superhero movies, just personally. I like some of them but I cannot really relate to a superhero. I have trouble with fantasy stories. And famous books — I write my own stuff, a famous book is really not an option for me. There's very little left in big movie genres. It's science fiction or it's disaster movies. And what is the most successful movie of all time? Titanic. And the best part of a disaster movie is: No sequel.

Cut Other Would-Be Disaster Porn Directors Off At The Knees

You have to be a tyrant about getting your end of the world movies made. This is why Emmerich is the King of the B grade blow em up movies, because he'll make it before you. Who wants to wait until 2012 to make 2012? Not this guy.

"First when we had the idea, I said, I'm not going to do it. I don't want to repeat myself. Then we heard inklings that other people were working on something like this, also with the title 2012. Then Harald [the screenwriter] said, "Someone else is going to do it. Don't you want to be the person to do it? Look at your movies: you are perfect for this. Make it your crowning achievement."

Be G-Rated Political *Winky Wink, Nudge Nudge*

If you've seen the five-minute clip from 2012, you know there is a Arnold-esque Governor in the film reassuring the people of California that everything is a-okay, after a mess of earthquakes rocked the town, to which John Cusack yells he's "just an actor, he's reading a script." Suddenly fake Arnold gets creamed with a few lights. Subtle, no? We asked the director if this was on purpose as in The Day After Tomorrow, when actor Kenneth Welsh was cast to be a Cheney look-alike. If you remember Welsh was a bit of a dick about the whole, "we're all gonna die," situation. Which Emmerich later confirmed was a dig at the Bush administration's environmental policies. Emmerich shrugged off our political questions:

"We kind of felt that not every politician should be on the ark. I don't know where these ideas come from. We have terrible fun with what we do."

Which I'm translating as: We lob softball politics at the audience, just so everyone feels good about themselves, for being in on the obvious political joke. I wonder what Emmerich would say his reasoning behind casting Glover as the president before we knew the results of this election. Or was it simply just another near-future "Neato, a black president!" moment?

For Every Wrinkled-Shirted Scientist, You Need At Least One Crazy Prophet

Dennis Quaid, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Jeffrey Goldblum may have messy hair, messy clothes, big ideas, and know all the facts. But they pale in comparison to their crazy counterparts: the homeless guy with the dog, spouting words of humanity, Woody Harrelson's crazy tree-hugger and the drunken pilot from Independence Day who knew there were aliens all along.

[Woody] came out of the fact that there are a lot of crazy people on the internet that believe a lot of crazy things about 2012, so we thought that we have to have a character like that. And then on the other hand we have to explain what the theories are like Earth Crust Displacement. How do you describe them in scientific terms. And we thought, we can have Woody tell the audience how this all works, with a little you tube.

But Make The Destruction Glamorously Terrible

Say what you will about the exceedingly cheesy work of Roland — you can't deny, when he slaughters millions of tiny CG specks that are supposed to be people, he does it with panache and style. It may be ridiculous, but it's beautiful. Which is why, no matter how cliche or repetitive these movies get, it will make millions opening week, because people want to see the great big wave number two come careening into New York City yet again, but on a big fat splodey screen. When it comes to disaster porn, we're all addicts.

William Gibson's Pattern Recognition Is A "Stealth Fashion Bible" [William Gibson]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:09:00 -0800

Coolhunter Cayce Pollard, from William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, is the strangest kind of fashion icon, writes Kat at NoGoodForMe.com: invisible, allergic to brands, impenetrable. "She stands for the ultimate rejection of the Fashion Industrial Complex," but she also defines style.

U.S. Braces For Angry Robot Invasion [Books]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:52:22 -0800

HarperCollins' new science-fiction imprint, Angry Robot, is invading the United States at last, starting in May — and instead of ramping up slowly, it's hitting us with six titles per month. Horrific afterlife experiences, dark magic, and more...

We're pretty excited for the Angry Robot release schedule, not least because it's bringing some authors to our shores who deserve more love. Here's the full schedule:

May
Moxyland by Lauren Beukes
Slights by Kaaron Warren
Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero by Dan Abnett
White Tiger (Dark Heavens #1) by Kylie Chan
Winter Song by Colin Harvey
Kell's Legend (Clockwork Vampire Chronicles #1) By Andy Remic

June
Amortals by Matt Forbeck
Damage Time by Colin Harvey
Sixty-One Nails by Mike Shevdon
Red Phoenix (Dark Heavens #2) by Kylie Chan
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
Soul Stealers (Clockwork Vampire Chronicles #2) by Andy Remic

July
Blue Dragon by Kylie Chan
Nekropolis by Tim Waggoner
Vegas Knights by Matt Forbeck
The Crown of the Blood by Gav Thorpe
Walking the Tree by Kaaron Warren

August
City of Dreams and Nightmare by Ian Whates
Death's Disciples by J Robert King
Edge by Thomas Blackthorne
Embedded by Dan Abnett
The Road to Bedlam by Mike Shevdon

September
Dead Streets by Tim Waggoner
Book of Secrets by Chris Roberson
King Maker by Maurice Broaddus
Point by Thomas Blackthorne
Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard

Details on many of these books, and much more information, is available over at the Angry Robot site.

Ewan McGregor Finally Made A Decent Star Wars Movie [Movie Review]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:15:12 -0800

The Men Who Stare At Goats is about warrior-monks with psychic powers, who call themselves Jedis over and over again. But the movie's structure also echoes the original Star Wars trilogy, and it's full of fun Lucas riffs. Spoilers below...

In Men Who Stare At Goats, Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton a reporter who's trying to escape from his boring life, so when he gets wind of a secret military program from the 1980s to create "Jedi" soldiers, he follows the story. At first, you think that he's just a very off-beat embedded journalist, following the semi-retired Jedi Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) around, but it becomes clear that Wilton is getting more out of this than just a story: He's becoming Cassady's Padawan and learning to become a Jedi himself.

McGregor, of course, played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the three Star Wars prequels, and the film winks at this fact a few times, when Clooney says McGregor knows nothing about being a Jedi. But actually, in many ways, this is the Star Wars movie I wish McGregor had starred in before — it's about learning the ways of the Jedi, and seeing the contradictions inherent in the phrase "warrior-monk."

In Goats, which is based very loosely on the real-life story of the New Earth Army, we discover that the U.S. Army developed a secret program, following the humiliation of Vietnam, to fight a new way. And this involved developing psychic powers, but also letting in some of the counterculture's spirit of anarchy and playfulness. Drugs, long hair and crazy paintings. Unfortunately, one of the leading Jedi in this organization was secretly aligned with the Dark Side (this is actually explictly said at least once) and he corrupts the organization, tarnishing the other leading Jedis and turning one of them into his henchman of evil. So in the end, McGregor is the movie's Luke Skywalker, learning the Jedi legacy and ultimately helping to restore the light side.

Along the way, Clooney doesn't just teach McGregor how to burst clouds with his mind: he gives McGregor a grounding in the spiritual discipline behind the Jedi way, with a mixture of battiness and sageness that's actually kind of intoxicating.

All of this is played with tongue pretty firmly in cheek, but at the same time, it's made pretty explicit. And the movie is as charming as McGregor, Bridges and Clooney can make it. Bridges, especially, brightens up the screen every time he turns up as Bill Django, the founder of the Jedi organization.

There's a parable, here, of the ways in which America itself has turned away from opportunities to become more peace-loving, more creative, and less exploitative of our natural resources and of each other. And the failure of the "Jedi" program to meld the hippie "peace and love" ethos with the military's buzz-cut culture doesn't just expose the fact that you can't be a soldier and a monk (in our military, anyway.) The culture clash also aims to say something about America, and the ways in which we've betrayed the promise of the 1970s peace movement.

Here's a personal share: I have an alarmingly low tolerance for Baby Boomer nostalgia and, after several years in the Haight Ashbury, my hippie kitsch allergy is at a permanent level of anaphylactic shock. And yet, there is something beautiful and hilarious about the scenes where Bridges transforms his army unit into a group of shaggy-haired, dancing oddballs. And something heartbreaking about seeing the Dark Side destroying the Jedis. Mostly, this is because Jeff Bridges and George Clooney are so much fun to watch, you don't care.

And like I said, Star Wars sits at the center of the movie's themes. At one point, Clooney says that the Jedi program flourished in the 1980s because Ronald Reagan was such a big Star Wars fan. Reagan's Star Wars, of course, was a missile defense program that many scientists claimed was impractical, but Reagan never let go of the idea. Star Wars is so many different things to different people: a glorious war story, a window into one man's personal growth, a parable of controlling your hatred and choosing peace... part of why the original trilogy was so powerful was that it spoke to so many people in so many different ways.

And in a way, Men Who Stare At Goats is as much about the legacy of Star Wars as is it as about the legacy of woo-woo New Age hippie culture. Our culture was so heavily shaped by Star Wars, it opened up different ways of thinking about the way of the warrior, as well as offering some of the most exciting battle scenes ever committed to film. How you view Star Wars says a lot about your outlook on the universe in general.

Goats is often hilarious and sometimes chilling, but it's not a perfect movie. In particular, the pacing is a bit lead-footed at times, and the story loses some of its impact as a result. The movie's mix of absurdity and scary war scenes definitely won't work for everybody — I liked this film quite a bit, but Entertainment Weekly gave it an F. But all in all, I found it an entertaining, thought-provoking ride — of all the oddball films that have come out lately (including The Box and Fourth Kind) I'd say Goats is the most fun, and the most entertaining. Mostly, it's Jeff Bridges and George Clooney obviously having a blast playing another pair of larger-than-life characters, and that's a goat ride I'm always willing to take.

Enter The Multiple Demented Worlds Of The Perry Bible Fellowship [Book Review]

Stephen Goldmeier — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:36:44 -0800

Imagine a place filled with giant robot pizza boys, cardboard time machines, hideously mutated crime-fighting mole rats, and apocalyptic destruction. That place is the Perry Bible Fellowship, and now you can visit it with The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack.

The man behind the Perry Bible Fellowship is Nicholas Gurewitch. He produced PBF strips for the Daily Orange, a college newspaper, and for his website for nearly a decade, but the whole strip's run has never been collected in print in one place.

Until, that is, the Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack came out earlier this year. The book collects nearly every strip produced for the Perry Bible Fellowship, including loving homages to famous comic artists, meditations on sex and death, and a healthy dose of science fiction and fantasy strips.

In fact, the science fictiony strips tend to be among the best in the book. Gurewitch is at his best when he's exploring the absurdity of life and death, and there's no better way to explore this absurdity than with a good apocalypse or a story of science gone mad.

For instance, in "Sun Love," seen above, the Sun and the Earth's love affair, coupled with their casual disregard for humanity, amounts to an almost Lovecraftian tale of the horrors of an indifferent universe. But at the same time, it's also pretty cute. And damn funny.

And Gurewitch always has a healthy sense of fun. If a strip calls for it, he isn't afraid of a straight-forward gag, but he also isn't afraid to stretch a premise beyond its obvious conclusion and into something darker and more absurd, all without forgetting that humor is humor, be it dark and biting or light and fun.

An example of the former is "Astronaut Fall." It starts as a horrible, tragic moment during a space walk, but with the simple addition of a joyful child catching a "snowflake" on their tongue, the strip becomes an absurd death with a horrendously squick-inducing punchline.

An example of the latter, called "Super League," uses a super hero team to tell a joke that wouldn't be out of place in a "Dilbert" strip: a company making hiring decisions based on the applicant's ability to provide good coffee, not their skills. It's a pretty straightforward gag, but it's expertly executed and beautifully illustrated.

One caveat: some of the early strips, before the Perry Bible Fellowship found its unique voice, rely a little too heavily on anatomical jokes and innuendo. But no book is perfect, and this collection comes pretty close; as the book progresses, the crude anatomical jokes and innuendo become very clever anatomical jokes and layered innuendo.

And layered innuendo is one of Gurewitche's specialties. In "Zarflax," a hostile alien resorts to drastic means to try to lure in a hapless space adventurer. The result is essentially a space-bound anatomical visual pun.

It's overall a fantastic read, but if the collection has a weakness as a whole, it's that the experience is over way too quickly. The strips are one per page, and even at 256 pages, the hardbound book flies by too quickly. The upside of this is that the book merits multiple readings. Each time through these strips, I see new details that I might have missed in previous readings.

So peruse the strips below, and If you enjoy the strips you see here, the book is worth picking up. It includes bonus sketches, an interview with Gurewitch, and strips no longer available online. Plus, it makes a great conversation starter as a coffee table book. But only if you don't mind your conversations being about sex, death, irony, violence, and utter destruction. And laughter!

Buy The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack at Amazon

The Perry Bible Fellowship online

io9 Halloween Costume Show: Party Edition [Cosplay]

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:19:08 -0800

All I can say is that io9ers know how to make great costumes, and they know how to party. This is our final edition of the io9 Halloween Costume Show, and we've got some standouts.

And this is just a small sampling of all the amazing, sexy, crazy, and brilliant costumes in our full collection on Flickr. If you want to see more of your fellow io9ers partying down cosplay-style, then check out the full io9 Halloween Costume gallery on Flickr. See you next year!

This picture is great for two reasons. One, classic Trek pose. Two, this was taken at a party for physics researchers and students. Pierre-W proves physicists know how to party!

Tmoogan is a smokin' Comedian. He even got the facial hair right!

Is it possible that Andrewswright is the coolest dad ever?
From mjollnir999, a snapshot of a party where everybody dressed up just right.
Bonus points to oy.veh for adding special effects to this shot of the Ghostbusters hunting ghosts in some kind of office . . .

Thank you, vulcanized75, for keeping Starbuck alive in our hearts. Somebody seriously researched that tat.

I am in awe. Seriously, grendl64, this is fucking awesome.

Steampunk and loligoth are two great tastes that go great together, right sexyphlegm?
It's Sweeney Todd vs. Captain Mal! A cage match I'd like to see, and now I have, thanks to Gaambit.

Oh my! It's the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt! Operaghost1 says he's going to split the Republican vote by reviving the Bull Moose Party.

M1khaela knows what gets Teen Wolf excited - meeting a girl from the Anti-Sex League! This coupling is full of 1980s meta-goodness.

io9 Meetup in NYC on Thursday, Nov. 12 [Meetup]

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:40:14 -0800

If you're in the New York area, come out to meet your fellow io9 readers (and editors) on Thursday, the 12th, from 8-10 PM at The Magician bar. We couldn't have a meetup on Coruscant, so we'll settle for NYC.

Charlie Jane and Annalee (that's me) will be in NYC next week, and we're dragging Meredith along with us to host the io9 NYC Meetup. We'll be in the back room at The Magician, from 8-10 PM (and probably a little later to be completely honest).

Free drinks to the first ten people who find me (I'll be in wearing a tie) and tell me what their favorite scifi novel of the past year is. Depending on how drunk I am, I MAY be persuaded to buy drinks for people who can name a favorite indie scifi movie, but this is not guaranteed.

See you Thursday!

Commie Fringe Scientists Bring Back Deadly Space Souvenir [Fringe Recap]

Lauren Davis — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:06:21 -0800

With the World Series over, Fringe is finally back with a B-movie-inspired episode that plunges us into Russian fringe science, delves into Agent Broyles' past, turns people to ash, and has us wondering what the CIA is up to.

I suppose if Fringe has to do a relatively mythology-free episode, at least it harnesses a little B-movie magic. Last night's episode has shades of The Incredible Melting Man, in which an astronaut returns from space and becomes a monster who needs to consume human flesh to survive. But Fringe took a gory concept and made it creepier with its radiation-sucking cosmonaut turning people to ash. That opening scene was a great little nugget of horror; even though we expect it, it's chilling when the woman comes home and her excitement melts into trepidation, then frightened disbelief as her husband crumbles to ash. When Fringe does monster of the week, it does a solid job.

Scream Queens: I get that this was supposed to evoke classic horror movies, but does it only have to be the women screaming? Men are perfectly capable of emitting a nice, high-pitched wail.

Russian Fringe Science: It makes sense that the Russians would have fringe science (and that it might be even more developed than American fringe science). I hope this isn't just a throwaway mention, and that this somehow comes into play in the coming interdimensional war. And it's interesting that Walter still uses the term "pinko." Is it just because of his 17-year timeout, or does this indicate something about Walter's politics.

Whither Nina Sharp? It's also interesting that, in a Broyles-centric episode, we see neither hide nor cybernetic arm hair of Nina Sharp. Little has been made of Broyles' relationship with Sharp since it was revealed in the season premiere, and now that Broyles is returning to the case that ruined his marriage, he doesn't ask Sharp to use Massive Dynamics' resources. Perhaps he's trying to maintain some illusion that Olivia is the only one in contact with Massive Dynamics', or maybe he only turns to Nina Sharp when he knows she can help with the problem at hand.

Man in Black: As the episode went on, it began to feel less like a standalone episode, and more like we're lining up potential players for the battle ahead. The CIA is less than thrilled that the Fringe Division is poking its nose into the case of the missing cosmonaut. Does the CIA have its own Fringe Science Division? Although, at the end of the episode, a man from the CIA informs Broyles that the cosmonaut was still alive and gave a pointed look at the night sky. I wonder how often the CIA deals with problems by shooting them into space.

Astrid Action: This was a Broyles-heavy episode, so most of our regular cast took a back seat to Lance Reddick. Still, when are we going to see Astrid in the field already?

Walter Moment of the Week: Walter still got to be Walter despite the focus on Broyles. He maligned Russians, played with Tinker Toys, and shared yet another embarrassing memory from Peter's childhood (involving doodles of genitalia no less). But the most truly Walter moment was when we fully realized that Walter thinks of licorice the way some people think of tea cookies and canapes.

Morena Baccarin: I Am Not Obama [Exclusive]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:35:12 -0800

We spent ten precious minutes with V's Morena Baccarin, our favorite alien visitor — and she answered all our questions, as long as they painted her in a positive light. Of course, we had to ask her if she's Obama.

Baccarin plays Anna, the leader of the alien Visitors (or Vs) who come to Earth professing peace and friendship and promising healthcare and advanced technology. And of course, it's all too good to be true. Some pundits have been saying her character is meant to be Barack Obama, and Baccarin seemed to be aware of the comparisons. So we asked her if she thinks she's playing our new president, and she says:

I don't think we're saying Anna is President Obama. But she is the leader of her people, and she is coming down to Earth and offering healthcare, and offering cures for diseases, and things that sort of clean out and give people hope, and there are definite parallels to be drawn and our intentions are to create a show that people relate to. And I think this is something that's been on people's minds, even before Obama... finding hope again, and healthcare, and finding a leader, and someone who can save us from the hole we've gotten ourselves into.

Don't expect Baccarin to play to the cheap seats. One thing Baccarin stressed over and over again, in our interview, is that she's going for a subtle portrayal of Anna, and she never plans to become as out-and-out sinister as Diana, the evil alien leader in the original miniseries.

"We're working with Anna being a little more subtle than in the original," says Baccarin. She wants Anna to be "creepy" and "scary" but also have qualities that the audience can relate to. That said, in the next few episodes, we'll get to see Anna "show her true colors a little more."

Baccarin says her goal is to make the audience feel drawn to Anna, even though they know they shouldn't be:

It's really true of all the characters on the show: We walk a fine line. It's way more interesting to question why they feel they want to follow this character. There should be qualities that [the audience] can identify with, that we see them in ourselves. People identify [with Anna] and feel compelled by her, and feel like they want to follow her... and can't understand why they feel drawn to her. [The audience should be saying,] "I don't know, this isn't right that I'm going for it."

This was something the producers had worked out early on, she adds:

We had discussed early on, when I auditioned, [that] she couldn't be robotic or alien. She had to be nurturing and human, to be allowed into people's lives, so that people would trust her... We created this character who's very calm and controlled and nurturing. You don't see her losing her cool, and you don't see what's behind her motivations. It's like having your neighbor turn out not to be who you thought they were.

This subtle approach means that you have to watch Baccarin carefully to catch the little cues she drops in. The way she flutters her eyelashes. The way she lifts one eyebrow, or looks straight at someone, or looks away. Says Baccarin, "Obviously, Anna lives in a very constrained space, in that she is very precise, but there is a lot of freedom of subtlety and nuances."

I asked Baccarin how she felt about playing a villain after playing the more sympathetic Inara on Firefly, and she responded: "It really is fun. I'm not going to call her a villain. I'm going to say that you said that." (She really is good at the slippery politician thing.)

From Anna's perspective, "she is is being the best leader she can be. And if it's at the expense of a couple of humans, so be it."

Baccarin admits she gets asked whether she'll be eating a live hamster — like, pretty much all the time. She says:

We haven't done it in these [first] four episodes, and I'm bracing myself. And so many people ask about it, I think it's imminent. I think we are going to pay homage to those moments, but not maybe do them the same way — so hopefully I won't have to put a hamster down my throat.

Finally, I asked Baccarin how, as an immigrant from Brazil, she feels about taking part in a show that promotes xenophobia and suspicion of visitors. She says you shouldn't read too much into V:

I think we should all be suspicious of aliens. We're not saying be suspicious of people from other cultures, I think we're saying be suspicious of people from outer space. So we're very safe there. There's a lot of ethnic diversity in our world now, and we're not commenting on that all. It's literally about people coming from another world.

V airs on Tuesday nights for the next three weeks, and then goes away until March due to some kind of sporting event.

The Real Life Inspiration Behind Ronald Chevalier, Revealed! [Gentlemen Broncos]

Meredith Woerner — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:12:05 -0800

Love Gentlemen Broncos or hate it, you can not deny that Jemaine Clement's insane take on science-fiction writer Ronald Chevalier is hilarious. But what if we told you this guy actually exists? Meet the real-life inspiration behind the icon.

Ronald Chevalier is a mix of three different, amazing, real life people. First off, our favorite little Chevalier-ism has to his advice when creating a character. "Just add Anus and it becomes magical." Turns out the person behind this theory actually exists and he's making science-fiction films. According to Jared Hess at the NYC premiere for Broncos...

That's borrowed from a buddy of mine that I went to film school with, named Steve Groo. He's made like a hundred movies that are mostly science-fiction related. You can check out his Resident Evil trailer online. Anyway but in his films he has really great fantasy names and one day I said, "Steve how do you come up with such killer names for your characters in your films?" And he said, "Well that's easy, you just take a name like Nebakanezer and I change that to a name for a King Elf, Nebakaroneous. It's very easy." He had other theories like if you're going to name a barbarian use AXX at the end of each name. And I talked to him before to make sure he was cool with using it in the film. But I have to give him a shout out because that's not for me.

The Anus Method:

But not only that, if you've seen the film it's pretty clear that the shadow videos and super small budget trailer-making company is inspired by the film production company Steve Groo's contributes to Wolf Productions. Here's a taste below, it's just, well brilliant and awesome and if anything hopefully shows Jared Hess's roots and how Gentlemen Broncos is more of an homage to his friends and people he's met and less, Bully Porn.

The next bit of real life inspiration for Chevalier, according to Hess, was Michael York in Logan's Run. It's almost creepy how much Clement nailed that accent.

Michael York in Logan's Run And Ronald Chevalier:

And finally the amazing look of Chevalier: Native American garb, never-used blue tooth, turtlenecks and mom jeans — was inspired by an actual screen writer Hess worked with on the production, which I believe may be the production Handcart.

"His look was based on a screenwriter [on a film] that I was a camera assistant for a long time, and I was working on a really weird movie about pioneers that were heading west. And one day the screenwriter visited the set, I was a camera assistant, and he was dressed almost exactly like Chevalier is the first time we see him. With the Bluetooth that he never used, big hair, great jeans, a turtleneck."

So there you have it, the three real life inspirations to create perhaps one of the best characters of this year. Now if we could just get them all together and throw a party, I would die a happy fan.

Fan-Made Replicas of Science Fiction's Favorite Land Vehicles [Scifi Vehicles]

Lauren Davis — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:30:00 -0800

While some science fiction fans like to dress as their favorite character, some handy fans prefer to dress up their cars as incredibly detailed replicas of movie machines. We take a look at the futuristic vehicles on the road today.

Our sister site Jalopnik has a stellar collection of movie cars — both official and replicas. These are mostly fan-made, drivable replicas of cars and bikes from science fiction.

Batmobiles

Some of the more ambitious projects are the Batmobiles. You can actually purchase kits to convert various car models into an Adam West-era Batmobile. But some fans prefer to make their Batmobiles the hard way.

It took Leif Garvin of Stockholm 20,000 hours and $1 million to convert a 1973 Lincoln Continental into the Tim Burton Batmobile. It may not be quite as hi-tech as Batman's car, but it does feature a voice recognition system and rear cameras. [via Toxel]

Bob Dullam attracted massive amounts of attention when he showed off his homemade Tumbler from Batman Begins. Dullam made the entire vehicle from scratch, and even made his own Batsuit and props to go with it. [via Superhero Hype]

And frequent builder Grant Hodgson made a Tumbler of his own. [via Jalopnik]

Bob Causey helped Dullam with his Tumbler and decided to create a Batmobile of his own. Causey took on the Batman Forever version, complete with a remote controlled top. [via /Film]

Kaneda's Bike

There are plenty of models of the iconic motorcycle from Akira, but many of those are non-working copies. Neo-Fukuoka, not a fan group but a professional garage, created multiple, working copies of Kaneda's bike, some offered for sale. [via Riding Sun]

But another fan, Matus, is also creating a replica of the bike from scratch, although he hasn't yet progressed to the exterior.

Mad Max Vehichles

Mad Max vehicles are a perennial favorite among vehicle modifiers. There are impressive lists of fan-made Interceptors at Last Interceptor and Mad Max Movies. But one fan stands out above them all. Adrian Bennett didn't just transform a Ford Falcon Coupe into the famous vehicle, he moved himself, his car, and his entire family from England to a tiny Australian town so he could live out his Mad Max fantasies. [via SCI FI Wire]

Other Mad Max vehicles have gotten the fan treatment as well, such as this Yellow Interceptor made by Grant Hodgson (who also did one of the Batman Tumblers):

And Goose's bike by Mike Acebo:

KITT

Knight Rider's KITT is another favorite, and again there are kits you can purchase to give your car KITT's Cylon eye. Of course, the best KITT mods don't just change the outside of the car, but are also incredibly detailed on the inside, such as this converted 1984 Firebird, which speaks in KITT's voice [via Jalopnik:

And this 1992 Firebird:

Frankenstein's Car

The Gator Car from the original Death Race 2000 would have been more fun, but some Russian fans of the Death Race remake took an impressive crack at Frankenstein's car, starting with a Chevy Camaro. [English Russia]

The DeLorean Time Machine

A DeLorean is already a DeLorean with those retrofuturistic gull-wing doors. But add a flux capacitor, a temporal display on the dashboard, and a liberal sprinkling of light-up buttons, and you've got yourself Doc Brown's time machine. [Auto Blog]

Ecto-1

George Barris, who famously designed the original Batmobile among other TV cars, famously made a replica of Ghostbusters' classic car, one that is perpetually for sale. But others have taken on the Ecto-1 challenge as well. Ghostbusters fanatic Joe Kerezman created an Ecto-1 of his very own.

And a fan calling himself "Venkman21" modified his from a Cadillac ambulance.

Luke Skywalker's Landspeeder

They may not hover, but fans can always pretend in their homespun landspeeders. [all via Interbent]

This puppy was made from a 1988 Ford Escort and is actually a licensed, street-legal vehicle.

This pre-distressed model, created by Daniel Deutsch, runs on batteries and can climb to 25 MPH — impressive, though not exactly putting the "speed" in "landspeeder."

Why the teeth and the clown's head on a pole? It's an art car from Burning Man.

And this last one — which is a bit heavier on the wheels — comes from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and annual Star Wars Day.

The Stormy Heart Of The Pinwheel Galaxy [Space Porn]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0800

This area near the core of the Pinwheel Galaxy turns out to be bursting with newborn stars, some only a few million years old. And there are about 60 supernova remnants, showing the full stellar life-cycle. [Hubble via Wired]

President Obama Inspired Roland Emmerich to Make Independence Day 2 [Independence Day 2]

Lauren Davis — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:30:00 -0800

We've known for a while that Roland Emmerich is readying a sequel to his White House-exploding alien invasion movie Independence Day. What's taken him so long? He was just waiting for the right president to take the Oval Office.

After Independence Day brought us Bill Pullman as the inspirational President Whitmore, Emmerich didn't feel the spirit of the film was compatible with the times of the Bush administration:

"In Independence Day, it was about a king who leads his country into a fight against an outside invader. I didn't want to make that movie during the Bush years. It was not thought that George W. Bush would have made a great king. Now with Obama, it's another story."

The sequel would, in fact, focus on the US President, but it's still plagued by funding woes and disagreements between Emmerich and Fox as to whether to bring back Will Smith. But Emmerich seems determined to return to the universe of what he calls his "defining film."

Roland Emmerich Wants To Make Independence Day 2 Because Of Obama [Cinema Blend]

Jeff Bridges' Secrets Of Eternal Youth [Exclusive]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0800

The Men Who Stare At Goats transports you from the Vietnam War to present-day Iraq, that journey through time succeeds largely thanks to Jeff Bridges and George Clooney. We asked director Grant Heslov how they pulled it off. Minor spoilers...

In Men Who Stare At Goats, in theaters today, Bridges plays Bill Django, a Vietnam veteran who founds a group of "psychic soldiers," who are warrior-monks steeped in the counterculture. And the film follows him from the 1970s to the present day. Meanwhile, George Clooney is Lyn Cassady, the best of Django's psychic soldiers, who takes a young reporter, played by Ewan McGregor, under his wing.

Both Bridges and Clooney manage to play their characters in the 1970s (in Bridges' case) and the 1980s (for both actors), as well as the present day. It gives you hope that Bridges really will be able to pull off his role as two different Flynns, an aged version and an ageless copy, in Tron Legacy.

So how did they manage to make Bridges and Clooney appear to span a few decades in the movie's flashbacks and present-day sequences? Heslov explains it was a tough decision:

We spent a lot of energy on that, even when I was just starting casting and George [Clooney] and I were talking about him doing the role, I was [wondering], "Do I have a younger guy play George in the past, and then George plays himself in the present? Or do I have George do it all?" And the more I thought about it, the more I hated the idea [of another, younger actor stepping in.] It's always hard to jump back and forth in time. I just felt like, if I had another actor playing George, the audience would be questioning, "Does he look enough like George?"

So once they had decided to use the same actors throughout, "it was just a question of how to back it up," and where to place the actors' current ages in the narrative. And how to use wigs and mustaches, among other things, to make the actors look younger in their flashback sequences.

For the 1970s sequences, they pulled Jeff Bridges' face back, to tighten the skin. "They use this kind of tape," explains Heslov. "They basically pull back under the hairline, and they tape it and pull back a little more, and then they use strings." The make-up people "use all sorts of gadgets" to get rid of Bridges' wrinkles, which sounds a bit painful. "It was fun, but it was time-consuming." Luckily, Bridges is "kind of a perfectionist," who "loves all that character-detail stuff." some actors don't want to be bothered, but Bridges will obsess over every aspect of his characters, including wardrobe, hair and makeup.

Also, for scenes set in the past, Heslov used as much soft light as possible, and in the present, "it was all about as much harsh light as we could use."

Escape From The Valley Of Elah

The majority of Goats' present-day sequences take place in Iraq, where Ewan McGregor's character travels to try and cover the war. So I asked Heslov if he was worried that his film would be lumped together with Iraq movies like Valley Of Elah and Stop Loss, which have bombed at the box office.

But Heslov says that he doesn't think of Goats as an Iraq war movie. "It has very little to do with Iraq, except that that's the backdrop of where the story takes place." The movie does touch on modern-day issues like torture and the military's habit of hiring huge contractors like Halliburton to take care of basic security and other functions, but "it was never my intention to make an Iraq war movie."

Counterculture meets military culture

One of the most striking images in Goats is the way Jeff Bridges' character brings a hot-tubbing, Zen, druggy counterculture influence to bear on the 1980s military. The merging of two opposite cultures in the "warrior monk" program is so loopy and weird, it feels like an alternate history. We asked Heslov if he thought the counterculture and military culture ever could really coexist, or learn from each other like that.

Heslov said he really does believe that the military is always exploring alternative ways of fighting wars. And he definitely does believe that in the wake of its experience in Vietnam and the 1960s and 1970s in general, the military was "beaten down by that experience, and they were searching for ways to change it up." But at the end of the day, Heslov thinks it would probably never have worked out, even if the individuals involved had behaved differently. Plus, if the military really learned to win without killing people, then it wouldn't really be war any more.

A debt to Dr. Strangelove.

Heslov says the weird blend of comedy and horror in his movie owes a lot to influences like Dr. Strangelove, M.A.S.H. and Catch-22. Certain directors, like Altman and Kubrick, have been very influential to him, and he did think about their works as he was creating this film.

Heslov says he tried to keep Goats from falling too far into horror or comedy, by keeping it as grounded as possible. Even at the most absurd points of the story, "I tried to keep it as real as possible, so the absurdness of the actual" situation would come through. Things like George Clooney trying to burst clouds with his mind, or people trying to run through walls, were played straight instead of playing up their silliness. "I hope that by maintaining that real tone, you could slide back and forth" between the absurd and the real.

AI Expert Says We Should Welcome An Economic Takeover By Robots [Quote Of The Day]

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:30:00 -0800

In a recent post for the Foresight Institute, AI researcher J. Storrs Hall talks about the four different kinds of AI that might eventually surpass humans as planetary overlords. But he's not worried:

The key thing to remember when thinking about the economic AI takeover is that it is not something we should be trying to prevent. Why shouldn't we, the human race as a whole, build machines to do the hard work we need done, and spend our time enjoying the resulting wealth? Why shouldn't we spend our efforts deciding what needs to be done, and let the machines do it

Sounds very Asimovian.

via Foresight Institute

Could John Cusack Be Vying For The Preacher Film? [Exclusive]

Meredith Woerner — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:00:00 -0800

We talked comic book adaptations with John Cusack, and whether he's ready for his own comic-based film. One particular vampire and killer comic has sparked his interest, and we're wondering: Could it be Preacher?

We talked to Cusack yesterday as part of 2012 interviews:

With comic book films being so huge right now in Hollywood and big-name actors like Robert Downey Jr. starring in films such as Iron Man, would you ever consider doing a comic book adaptation or a superhero film?

I don't know, but yeah, for sure. I think the adult comics are some of the best film ideas out there.

Are there any comics in particular out there that you'd like to make?

Not one that I particularly know that I would like to do, but whenever I've come across one, I've really liked them.

Are there any [comic book movies] you've seen floating around in Hollywood that you'd like to see made?

Yeah, I can, there was one or two that I heard of that sounded really cool. One of them was about, I think... it's a vampire and a killer, and they're on the road, and it's this really strange story. I thought that sounded pretty cool. Also some of the obscure ones, I don't know if there are any more superheroes left.

That sounds a little bit like Preacher?

I think it might have been Preacher.

You should get involved with that!

I'm trying to. I heard about that one, I like that.

Who would you want to play?

I'd say either the vampire or the priest. One of those two guys.

So just the two best characters in the comic?

Why not?

So I'm not 100% sure if Preacher is the script that Cusack saw, but the name definitely struck a chord with Cusack. I can't even imagine Cusack as an murderous Cassidy, but he could make a pretty bad ass Jesse or even Arseface's daddy. John August's screenplay may not even be finished yet, and it's possible Cusack was merely talking about it as an idea he'd heard floating around Hollywood.

Last we heard about the adaptation of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's comic series, Sam Mendes was possibly going to direct and the script was half finished in May. But at least Mendes said he was trying to translate it just right so there might be a second or a third.

Why Aggressive Men Finish Last [Evolution]

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800

Among the tiny insects known as water striders, males who aggressively attempt to mate with females don't wind up with as many offspring as their more gentlemanly counterparts. How can aggressive mating ever be a losing strategy?

A group of researchers in the United States decided to do an experiment with water striders, in which they observed the mating success of prudent, "nice" males versus aggressive, "psychopathic" males. The latter group tried often to mate with the females very aggressively, and in previous experiments they had the most reproductive success. But these scientists discovered that the success of the psychopaths depended on very specific laboratory conditions

It turned out that other studies of sex among water striders had kept the population contained in a limited area, where females had access to very few males. When the researchers opened up the insects' habitat, allowing the females to roam freely, they discovered that the less aggressive males attracted the highest number of mates.

According to a release about the research, published yesterday afternoon in Science:

"The presence of psychopaths dramatically reduced the productivity of the population," [biologist David Sloan] Wilson said. "When all the males were gentlemen, the females laid about three times more eggs than they did when all the males were psychopaths. And yet within each group the psychopaths were doing better than the gentlemen. How do the gentlemen persist if they're disadvantaged within the group?"

Once the females could move between groups, the researchers had their answer. [Researcher Omar Tonsi] Eldakar and Michael J. Dlugos, then also a Binghamton graduate student, devised a wading pool equipped with special doors that could restrict movement between groups or allow the insects to move freely.

"When they opened the doors, the females would leave whenever a psychopath came around," Wilson said. "The whole thing resulted in a heterogeneity in which the females were clustered with the gentlemen. It's the movement of individuals that creates these differences between groups that favor nonaggressive males."

Who knows how much research into sexual selection has been flawed because researchers forgot the crucial ingredient of female freedom?

Ultimately, what's interesting about this study is that it shows why isolated populations might engage in a different mode of sexual selection than a free-ranging population that has a lot of contact with outside groups.

via Science

Science Fiction Legends On Black Velvet Part 2: Blacker And More Velvety [Science Fiction Art]

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:00:00 -0800

The black velvet smoothness of science fiction art continues, like the blackness of space, only creamier. Artist Bruce White saw yesterday's black-velvet gallery and steered us to his gorgeous portraits from Star Trek, Star Wars, BSG, Doctor Who and more.

White's Deviant Art gallery includes tons of these amazing paintings, some of which are still for sale. They're all acrylic on stretched black velvet, generally around 14 by 18 inches, although some are as big as 18 by 24. And they're like your most vivid dreams about robots, spaceships and aliens, only brought to life in pure velvet.

Says White:

I am a huge scifi geek. I saw this velvet painting on the Star Wars Collector's Archive, and I thought it was so cool in an awesome, yet cheesy way. I figured I could reproduce it pretty quickly. I was wrong. Painting on velvet is a lot harder than I thought. I did a few more, which were a little better, but they were still more like the "oh god that's so bad that it's funny" velvet paintings that seem so prevalent. I stopped trying for a while, and then had the idea, instead of trying to make them "cheesy", that I would try to paint them as realistically as I possibly could. Slowly, the paintings got better, and I started to get the hang of working on velvet. So, the more realistic paintings in my "deviantart" gallery are the more recent ones.

Check out more of his artwork here: [Bruce White on Deviant Art]

First Look At Alice On Set For Resident Evil: Afterlife [Resident Evil]

Meredith Woerner — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:30:00 -0800

Finally, here's our first good look at everyone's favorite Umbrella Corp resistance leader, Alice. Take a peek at Milla Jovovich and the cast of the next Resident Evil film, looking bad as hell. Plus on-set reports from Milla herself. Spoilers...

First off, it's so good to see Milla in her ass-kicking Alice gear again. We can't wait to find out what happened to her sexy naked clone army and what new mind powers she'll have in this movie. Also, you can see Ali Larter — so it's nice that she survived the last movie. Still, it looks like they never made it to Alaska, ah well.

For a better look check out all the strange white hospital like garb over at Shock Til You Drop, which has a bigger picture. Let's go ahead and assume that these white-dressed extras are part of some exceedingly excellent experiment group.

Meanwhile, Milla has been Twittering up a storm while on set, and I have to say, it sounds like fantastic, violence heavy, mayhem. Exactly how we like our Resident Evil. Here are a few highlights, including a couple items we touched on in yesterday's morning spoilers:

"When Ali and i were doing the fight in the shower block, i had to point my shotgun into camera and shoot...but when i did, the glass protecting the camera completely shattered! that is definitely going on the gag reel for the dvd! lol!"

"and its supposed to be super heroic with all of us shooting thru a wall of undead as we run towards a potential escape route..."

"They were of the big action sequence with Alice and Claire fighting THE EXECUTIONER who in reality is an 8 ft. tall heavy weight boxer! He has a HUGE axe and we're in a prison shower, so every time he swings the axe, showers explode! So thru the whole scene its literally raining! so beautiful!"

"I fly a small aircraft in this film and they did a shot of it landing on the boat we're on the night before last and get this, all the people who live in the skyscrapers around the harbor phoned 911 reporting a plane crash on the ship! how rad! they got HUNDREDS of call!"

The First Posters from Kick-Ass, the Latest Spot for Avatar, Smallville's Wonder Twins, and the Hobbit's Unexpected Source Material [Morning Spoilers]

Lauren Davis — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0800

Avatar sees yet another TV spot, and Kick-Ass' superheroes get posters at last. The Hobbit script draws from material not in The Hobbit, and see the Wonder Twins activate on Smallville. Plus, Lost, Star Trek, Harry Potter, and Fringe.

Avatar

The latest TV spot shows one of Pandora's monsters taking down an AMP suit. [First Showing]

Star Trek:

Think we've seen the last of Christopher Pike? Maybe not. Bruce Greenwood says he's spoken to J.J. Abrams about Star Trek 2. And he says "J.J., one of the nicest guys on the planet, has indicated there will be a place in the project for me." At the same time, Greenwood cautions, "there are no guarantees." [Hill Country Times via TrekToday]

Kick-Ass

The movie about superheros in the real world gets a series of interlocking character posters. More at the link. [IGN]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

An Italian magazine claimed that Daniel Radcliffe would channel his Equus performance and bare all for the penultimate film. Alas, the rumored "sensual" scene seems to be just that, a rumor. Radcliffe's representative says it's an utter fabrication. [Digital Spy]

The Hobbit

According to Ian McKellen, the movie draws not only from the novel The Hobbit, but also from other works by Tolkien. [MTV Movies Blog]

Lost

A Lostie took some fresh picture of Dharmaville looking less than fresh. The houses were intentionally dirtied and the playground's swingset haf been nearly demolished. But the rec room had a fresh coat of paint. [Dark UFO]

And someone snagged a photo of Ben Linus dressed as a teacher for the seventh episode "Dr. Linus." [Dark UFO]

Fringe

Olivia will meet the Observer in the episode "August." Anna Torv calls it "a really, really, beautiful, beautiful episode." William Bell and Walter Bishop will have a confrontation. John Noble, who plays Walter, says that he just filmed "a lovely scene" and that something very shocking will be revealed. And there's also the sense that of a breach, and that breaking the laws of nature comes with repercussions. The cast also had some things to say about the season that are more speculative than spoiler. Joshua Jackson believes that we'll see the alternate Walter and that Peter will discover he's from "over there" (although he doesn't know if Peter will return to the Fringe team or if he'll want to burn the whole universe down). Noble believes that when we meet the alternate Walter, he'll be thoroughly pissed off. And Torv hopes we'll see an alternate Olivia. [SCI FI Wire]

Anna gets her tourist visa — and a convenient photo op — in November 17th's episode "A Bright New Day." [VisitorSite]

Stargate Universe

Here's the official description for tonight's episode:

With the situation onboard the Destiny dire, General O'Neill and Home World Command orders Col. Young to execute a high risk plan concocted by the I.O.A. scientists which, in theory, could return the crew to earth. Col. Young tries to buy more time so that he can consult those on the ship whose lives are at stake. While using the communication stones, Camile Wray is approached by I.O.A. representative Dale Strom who suggests that she steer opinion on the ship in favor of the plan.

Eli and Chloe are allowed to use the communication stones to visit Earth and their loved ones for what may be the last time. Their homecoming is not what they expected and the two try to drink away their worries at a club (featuring Janelle Monáe), but are unable to ignore the looming fate of the Destiny that they have left behind.

[GateWorld]

Smallville

The Wonder Twins make their purple debut in stills from next week's episode, "Idol." [Operation Save Clark Kent]

Heroes

Sylar and Matt are getting in trouble in Monday's episode, "Shadowboxing." [The ODI]

Adrian Pasdar is alive for now, and we see him in the photos for "Brother's Keeper." [Spoiler TV]

On Carson Daly, Masi Oka said that the fourth season is his second favorite season (after Season One), saying it tells smaller, more character-oriented stories. [Multipleverses]

Sanctuary

In the show's post-apocalyptic episode, Helen Magnus wakes up on the floor of the Sanctuary with no memory of what happened. Her office is riddled with bullet holes and her lab appears to have been the site of a horrific battle. With no one else around, she foes to the roof to see that the entire city of New York has been decimated, filled with craters. She'll eventually encounter two heavily armed men, one of whom fires a stun gun at Magnus. She wakes in an abandoned warehouse, where the men hose her down until her skin is raw. She'll feel exhausted and defeated when a third man enters the room. The man will be older and scarred, but she'll recognize him as Will Zimmerman. But just as she starts to ask him questions, he cuts her off and accuses her of being an imposter. He explains that Helen Magnus died three years earlier. [Pop Culture Zoo]

Additional reporting by Josh Snyder and Charlie Jane Anders.