Why Serenity Will Succeed Where Firefly Failed

In 2002, a great science fiction series named Firefly debuted on Fox, won some critical acclaim despite the boneheaded re-scheduling efforts by network bigwigs, and was promptly pulled after 11 episodes. It was probably one of the great science fiction series never seen, and at the time its passing was mourned by only a handful … Read more

X-Files Redux

For various reasons — renting Season 1 from Netflix, reviewing the X-Files: Resist or Serve (Amazon) game for SCI-FI.com, working on my Delta Green campaign — I’ve been spending an awful lot of time thinking about the X-Files, and about what went wrong with the series. At one point in time, the X-Files wasn’t just a … Read more

Aliased

Alias is my kind of show. It’s got a cute, strong-willed female lead (Jennifer Garner), storylines involving shadow wars between rival espionage agencies, and the obligatory James Bond like spy toys. And yet, somehow over the last three years I’ve never seen it on TV. Not once. Not even for five minutes while clicking through … Read more

Murky, Boring Underworld Not Worth Fighting Over

Underworld is the story of the secret war between werewolves and vampires, a war that humans have been blissfully unaware of for years, but which now threatens to erupt into our consciousness. It was also the subject of a lawsuit by White Wolf Games, who claimed that the vampires-vs.-werewolf storyline infringed on its copyright. Having … Read more

Harsh Mistress Coming to Theatres?

SCI-FI.com is reporting that Tim Minear has been hired to do the screenplay adaptation for Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. That’s excellent news — the novel’s been in limbo for forever and a day. The weird thing is how SCI-FI describes the book: “The novel deals with a 2076 rebellion on a former penal colony on the moon and has been read as an allegory about libertarianism and its costs.”

A Desperate New Future for Battlestar Galactica

One of the most divisive issues among science fiction geeks in 2003 (even more than Matrix sequels) was the re-make of Battlestar Galactica. Richard Hatch, Apollo on the original series, had been fighting for years to see Galactica resurrected, and many fans of the original science fiction series wanted to see his vision realized. Another, less … Read more

The Battlestar Galactica Blog

News of another science fiction blog’s reached my inbox. Michael Kantor has launched a Battlestar Galactica web log called, simply enough, Battlestar Galactica Blog. You can check it out at www.galacticablog.com. Recent topics include “Mormon influences in ‘The Living Legend’”, ” It’s a Human Universe” and “What to do with the Cylon head box?” Michael … Read more

Surviving Revolutions

I saw The Matrix: Revolutions last Wednesday, and based on some of the reviews I’ve read online (cnn.com, wired.com) I apparently survived a cinematic catastrophe of epic proportions. The sequel (as with its immediate predecessor) was big a failure as its progenitor was a success, or so speakth the pundits. Only the great unwashed masses … Read more