Category Archives: scifi

To read or not to read …

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That is the question.

Since the job requires a lot of reading, mainly technical, I have been reading less than I did when I was growing up. At thet time I was considered a “book worm” – eating stories by the page …. most of it science fiction. The first major fantasy work I read was the classic “Lord of the Rings” (no introduction necessary).

After moving to The Netherlands and having my present job I got to read less, but found more science fiction on video/TV, in the beginning Star Trek TNG, later much more.

I did read the occasional Star Trek and Star Wars book, but not much more, and sometimes had a series of books.

The first series I “discovered” was Raymond E. Feist’s “Riftwar Saga” which I loved. After one or two more sequel series the interest waned, and I have not read the later ones.

About 5 years ago a friend in Denmark introduced me to Anne McCaffrey’s writing. As a birthday present I received “Dragonflight”, “Dragonquest” of the “Dragonriders of Pern” series and the first of the “Acorna” series. Out of those I like the “Pern” series the best, but the other one is not bad at all. This lead to another bout of reading for me, then another hiatus.

In between all this came the “Harry Potter” series and I found that it appeals to the child in me as well as the more grown-up.

About a year ago I was talking to a friend I had not seen for a while. When I mentioned the blog and he heard the keyword “science fiction” he interrupted me and asked “You interested in books ?” well – yes, a few days later he arrived with 5 shopping bags full of books in the scifi and fantasy genre. I ended up with about 70 new titles – a considerable increase of my sf/fantasy book collection, some of which I may never get to read.

It looks like I am going to take a bit more time to do some reading, probably some short stories and an occasional novel. (Remember what I said the other day – time is a limited resource). Actually I have started this, having read a few novels lately. Some of the podcasts I am listening to are scifi/fantasy stories/plays, so I do get some fiction “reading” done. Listening to a podcast while walking to and from work sure beats trying to read a book in the traffic 😉 .

Arthur C. Clarke : “Travel by Wire” short story

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“Travel by Wire” was published in 1937 in “Amateur Science Fiction Stories” in December 1937. According to Clarke it was his first story ever published, and for that reason alone I would consider it historical. It has later been published in the “The Best of Arthur C. Clarke 1937 – 1955”, and later again (2000) in the book I found it in : “Arthur C. Clarke – The Collected Stories” with about 100 of his short stories.

The story is only 4 pages long, in spite of that I quite like it. It concerns the possibilities of sending not just voice, but also matter as signals through wires. To be sure, it also mentions “the radio transporter”, but considers it less reliable. a bit of rivalry between labs where the “wire transporter” and other things are researched gives the story a bit of humour as well. I also liked the final statement of the story.

In such a short story you do not find any character development, it is all about the idea.

I have no doubt that this story was inspiration for the “beaming” transporter in “Star Trek”.

I have recently learned that Clarke and Roddenberry had a long lasting friendship.

Now I have to read some more of the stories of this book. It also contains (no surprise) “The Sentinel” which in part is the basis for Clarke’s most famous work “2001 – A Space Odyssey”

Podcasts : Doctor Who

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I have, over the time been listening to 3 Doctor Who podcasts :

DWO Whocast
Doctor Who Podshock
The Sonic Newsdriver

They can all be found in iTunes, or else your favourite pod catcher.

There are many more, but time is a limited resource.

“DWO Whocast” is a not too long podcast with two hosts commenting on all things Dr.Who. All is rather well organized,news, reviews of TV episodes, Audio plays (Big Finish has a ton of those), books etc. and interviews with all kinds of people involved in the series. They do talk about spin-off stories like “The Sarah Jane Adventures”, too.

The last episode there was a review of the Big Finish audio release #112 : “Kingdom of Silver”. I have it here, but not yet listened to it (time, remember?), but it sounds like it will be a solid story.

It comes out on a regular (weekly) basis and I like the format. This one looks like a keeper.

“Podshock” is, for me at least, mostly too long, often running 1h 30 min or more. This makes it too time consuming for me – someone else may love the long format, and I have no problem with that – so I am considering whether to continue with that one.

Much of their programming is similar to the Whocast, they also have (had) a Sunday live recording when a new episode has been on the BBC on the Saturday before. Nice touch, but you have to be there for the live recording.

“The Sonic Newsdriver” is a short news program coming out several times per week – at least that is how it started.

I found the “Newsdriver” a bit long winded, so that one is under consideration, too. Remember : Limited time budget. I have not seen any new releases of the Newsdriver for about a week, so I might be wondering if it is podfading, or maybe there are just not much news to report.

Update : The Sonic Newsdriver is alive – new episode out today

The Babylon Podcast

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As a fan of Babylon 5 I have also become a fan of the Babylon Podcast.

I started listening to podcasts in 2006, and due to an accident late June that year I had some more time than usual at hand, so I started to look for more particular podcasts. Imagine my delight when I found that there was indeed a podcast about my favourite show. They had, at the time, “aired” about 40 shows. I downloaded the first few and listened, found it delightful and downloaded the rest, and listened to the first 42 (!) Babylon Podcasts in about two weeks.

Episode 1, a longer introductory episode “aired” in February 2006, with the hosts Summer and Tim telling why they were drawn to B5 and what kept them hooked, and Jeffrey telling about guests that could be expected to be featured on the podcast.

Show #2 had the first guest interview with Stephen Furst (“Vir Cotto”). He was a blast to both the hosts and to me to listen to, so the first hook was there …

Not just the Stars (actors) were interviewed, many of the crew as well. #3 brought us Bear Burge, the Master Prop Fabricator, and the first episode discussion on “Midnight on the Firing Line” (episode 1). Later this episode discussion segment got the title “Deep Geeking”, with it own “jingle”.

Many people have been interviewed on the podcast, a few names worth mentioning : Patricia Tallman, Bruce Boxleitner, Wayne Alexander (“The Inquisitor”, “Lorien” and a few other roles), John Iacovelli, Walter Koenig (one of my absolute favourite bad guys, the Psi Cop “Alfred Bester”), Producer John Copeland in a two part interview, the list is not endless, but quite long. Almost all of those interviews have been a joy to listen to, enriching the experience of the series.

A segment of feedback, at times *very* amusing, also brought out a “spin off” of the Babylon Podcast, called the “Three Edged Sword”. It all started as an in-joke between three of the most active feedback’ers, who finally agreed to make a story line out of their contributions. More about “Three Edged Sword” in a later post.

In the latest “Deep Geeking” (ep. #135), “No Surrender, No, Retreat” was discussed how Sheridan’s approach to the conflict was entirely different from the end of the Shadow War.

This week’s episode (#136) had an interview with the Babylon 5 script team members “Captain” Jaclyn and Jan, telling a part of the story of publishing the scrips for every single Babylon 5 episode, and the approach to doing it. Jaclyn stressed that J. Michael Stracynski had stated “It’s all about the fans!”

Of course, it is well known to many fans that the customer service of the scripts team has been legendary, more about the script books and the scripts team later

In addition to the compliments from the fans, Jaclyn had compliments to the fans and their behaviour when dealing with the scripts team.

For me one of the highlights was when Jaclyn who came into this as a business – a specialist in “print-on demand” books with no interest in SciFi – telling about her experience of watching B5. In short, she was blown away by the story. She told that she was surprised how much she could be moved by 1) a piece of art, 2) a television series, and finally 3) a SciFi series. High praise indeed.

link :
The Babylon Podcast

How I entered into the world of “Babylon 5”

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By Internet standards I will probably be regarded as old. I remember seeing Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001, a Space Odyssey” when it came in the cinemas in the late 1960’s, and, of course the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. I was allowed to stay up the night to see the first footsteps on the moon (some time around 2 AM local time). No internet, no NASA TV, just some blurred live black-and-white pictures on the telly.

My interest in scifi and space exploration had obviously started some time before, along with an interest in UFO’s and “X-Files” like stuff.

Fast forward to 1989 (yes – the year the Berlin Wall came tumbling down) I moved from Denmark to The Netherlands to work there.

At work, in the early 90’s we formed a group of “Star Trek” fans coming together watching a few episodes in an evening. We had come one evening to watch some “Deep Space 9”, and after that it turned out that one from the group had brought the “Babylon 5” pilot episode “The Gathering”.

I have to say that I did not like the pilot, thinking that it would not lead anywhere. How wrong I was … but I still consider the pilot under par, compared to what followed.

When the local TV started showing B5 I took another look, and lo and behold – that I found *much* better than the pilot.some season one episodes had the quality I was expecting from Trek, but soon the thing changed … this was not single episode stories – well. some of them were – but a longer story.

I was hooked.

I followed the 5 year arc to its end – sometimes at odd times of the day (or night), and soon found myself seeking out the VHS tapes.

After having watched the story several times I still get a thrill seeing it again. It has grown to be my all time favourite scifi story on TV – and there are many good ones out there.

I soon looked into more information about B5, on the net, books etc. – and got myself a few B5 goodies. But more about this later. Yes – I have all 15 volumes of J. Michael Straczynski’s (JMS) script books for all the B5 episodes he wrote. I still need to work myself though the about 7000 pages, but in time I will come though them, and as the completist in me told me, I got the “Other Voices” 3 volumes with episodes written by other writers, as well as the “Chronology” book and the quote’s book. There is enough reading for a while.

Podcasts about Scifi etc that I have been listening to

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Babylon Podcast : (no surprise) about Babylon 5, weekly

Slice of Scifi : all about Scifi/Fantasy, mainly in media – news – interviews – (film/TV/Web etc) on the same feed they have a voice mail feedback show weekly

Dragon Page : All about Scifi/Fantasy books – reading – writing – interviews etc. weekly, most weeks two shows

Scifi Talk : Interviews with Scifi/Fantasy creators etc (no special schedule that I have seen, but often more than once a week

DWO Whocast : all Doctor Who related news – interviews etc, weekly (mostly)

Dr Who Podshock : All doctor Who related – sometimes very long, no particular schedule that I can see

The Sonic Newsdriver : Doctor Who news, several times per week if news is coming in.

In some hours the raw and unedited Babylon Podcast recording for next week’s show will be ‘cast on a live feed. Unfortunately, because of the time zone differences I cannot listen every week, because for me it starts at 3 AM.

But (for me) tomorrow morning I will probably be there – it’s fun – and at times hilarious.

The feed can be found at :

http://stream.farpointmedia.net:8000/listen.pls (USA)
http://w2k.myftp.org:8000/FPM.m3u (Europe)
(or http://w2k.myftp.org:9000/listen.pls as an option for non-Icecast users)

Planets detected around Epsilon Eridani

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This is exciting for me as  a science fiction fan and as someone interested in space science in general.

Epsilon Eridani is a star a bit smaller than our own Sun – and quite young – only 800 million years old, located about 10.5 light years away.  Recently the Spitzer Telescope has detected a double asteroid belt around the star. The inner belt is located at a distance similar to the asteroid belt in our own solar system. Furthermore what looks like a cometary ring similar to the Kuyper Belt and indications of a planet at a distance similar to Jupiter’s. The Epsilon Eridani system looks more and more like our own solar system.

For more information take a look at these websites :

From the Spitzer Telescope site

From Discover Magazine

In the 1960’s I remember the scientific programs on the radio talking about SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) and mentioning this star as a likely candidate. At the time the young age of the system was not known, but it gave rise to the use of many science fiction writers using it as a home for intelligence.

In “Star Trek” the Mr. Spock’s home world Vulcan is located in the Epsilon Eridani system. and in “Babylon 5” the space station is in orbit around a planet in the same system.

Of course the star is featured in many other science fiction stories, too many to mention here.

Interesting stuff…

David Tennant leaves Doctor Who

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I just got the news that David Tennant is leaving Doctor Who at the end of 2009, see the news from the BBC. Unfortunately, if you are outside the UK the interview cannot be seen from the BBC website. Possibly it is out there on U-Tube, but I have not investigated.

We will still see Tennant in the Christmas Special this year and in 4 specials in 2009. Interesting enough the title of the Christmas special will be “The Next Doctor”. Could this be an indication of things to come ?

2010 will see a new showrunner, Steven Moffatt, along with the 11th (or is it 12th after the “funny” regeneration last season?) Doctor.

It will be interesting to see who will be cast as the 11th Doctor. Your guess is as good as mine. The rumour mill has probably already started.

I will have to say that I really liked Tennant as The Doctor. This autumn/fall he has been playing Hamlet with Patrick Stewart in the UK. Stewart has said that he is interested in being in Doctor Who, it could be interesting to see him as a villain for a change. Could he become the 11th Doctor ? Possibly, but I doubt it. It could be interesting, though.

Doctor Who and Steven Moffat score a hattrick.

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The winner of this years Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation, short form is the Doctor Who episode “Blink”, written by Steven Moffat.

I am not aware of any show winning the Hugo award in three consecutive years, it is in any case very unusual. What is even more unusual is the fact that the writer of the winners was the same.

I know very well that the final show is a joint effort of a lot of people, and the Doctor Who team has certainly done a very good job of reviving the series. Kudos to the BBC and the team.

So we have the last three year’s winners :

2006 : “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances”

2007 : “The Girl in the Fireplace”

2008 : “Blink”

All three among my favourites of the three seasons.

It will be interesting to see if Moffat’s new episodes “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead” will repeat the feat. The episodes were without any doubt among the best of the latest season. but I hope next year’s winner will be something else.

It is interesting to note that Steven Moffat is taking over from Russell T. Davies as the showrunner for Doctor Who in the 2010 season, and has hinted that there will be fewer “old enemies” coming back, and some change in the tone of the show. I am looking forward to it in any case.

Update :

After a check it turns out that “The Twilight Zone” has done this in 1960/61/62 for best dramatic presentation – at the time there was no distinction between short and long form. I have no information whether the same writer was responsible for the episodes.