Tag Archives: scifi

A Bit About 2024 So Far.

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2024 has been a bit more active with sci-fi.

Conventions:

Sci-Fi-Con in Randers, Denmark.

Fedcon in Bonn, Germany.

Both of these are more media based, with actors and illustrators etc visiting, and a bit less literature based, and I like both of them.

Fantasticon 2024: Sci-Fi, Horror and Fantasy. A bit more literature based, and writers as main guests. Of course, we talk about everything.

This year’s theme was Immortality, and there were some good presentations, one was about the Films in the Highlander series.

TV and Film:

So far this year, I have watched the film Dune 2. I like it so far, and will watch both 1 and 2 together at some stage when I have more time.

I watched the series on Netflix: The Three Body Problem, based on the book series by Chinese author Liu Cixin, a book series I read about 5 years ago, so I am familiar with the source material.

I found the TV series quite good and entertaining, and no all too far from the source material.

A Look Back at 2022.

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Here is a quick look at my 2022 activities:

Because the corona precautions have been relaxed, I did go to a few larger arrangements:

I went to the Fedcon in Bonn and enjoyed a good time with friends, old and new.

I went to the local Fantasticon again.

I went to the “Book Forum”, a national book fair. I had planned for spending all 3 days there, as Straczynski had been announced as a guest. He had to cancel, so I chose to go there for just one day.

Watching TV (series):

Seasons 4 and 5 of the Karate Kid spin-off Cobra Kai. Both great fun.

A rewatch of all seasons of the Fringe TV series. It holds up very well.

I finished The Expanse TV series. It is very good, I want more of the books adapted to TV.

A rewatch of one of my favourites: Sense8. Not the last time. I still wish I could get it on physical media.

Batwoman, season 5

Season 1 of The Man in the High Castle

House of the Dragon, season 1, I liked this one.

The Rings of Power (Prime) – it was OK for me.

The Flash, season 7

“1899” (Netflix) I liked this one very well all through the series. The conclusion was somewhat unexpected, but did make sense, given all the stuff throughout the series.

The Umbrella Academy, season 3

The first season of The Sandman (Netflix) was spectacular. 10 episodes in the series proper, and a bonus episode (11).

Season 3 of His Dark Materials is a very good conclusion to the story

Watching Movies:

The Netflix original scifi: Don’t Look Up!, a political satire around a comet hitting Earth.

A drama-documentary about Einstein and Eddington.

Audio Books:

I did a re-listen of the book series of The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey:

Main series story line:

  1. Dragonflight
  2. Dragonquest
  3. The White Dragon
  4. Renegases of Pern
  5. All the Weyrs of Pern
  6. Skies of Pern

Side stories:

  1. Moreta, Dragonlady of Pern.
  2. The Masterharper of Pern.
  3. Dragon’s Kin
  4. Dragon’s Fire

Most of the audio book listening has been done while driving

Books:

I started reading Leviathan Wakes, the first book of The Expanse saga. I may transition to doing it in audio book form, as it can be done while walking, resting or other non-focus requiring activities.

Other activities:

In other activities I started making arrangements for transitioning to solar power for parts of my house activities. More on that later.

In late spring my gas boiler stopped working. As I need some heating in the house I got a heat pump (air-to-air) mounted on the house, and it has lowered my (electric) power consumption compared to last year. Even as I had the gas boiler on, there were a bit of assistance from small electric radiators. I am actually surprised that it works as well as it does.

Yes, I have reduced the use of some electric/electronic equipment when the solar power got too low, and only the most necessary (wanted) equipment is in use now.

I did purchase a “toy car” (yes it is an EV) Why “Toy car” you might ask. Well it runs on batteries, and they are rechargeable. Some people referred to the EV with this term, and I found it good fun to use the expression myself. I got it in the beginning of November, so I have not driven long distances yet. I do see that in the winter the battery life is a bit low, but most of my driving will be in the summer half of the year, so I will do fine. Who knows, with my limited driving requirements I might be able to drive mostly on solar for 9 months of the year.

Yes, this requires a much larger solar power system, and this may take a while to build. We shall see how it goes.

Now it is time to make some plans for the activities in 2023. I have some ideas, some of them concerning generating more solar power. We shall see what I will do.

November: (Lack of) Scifi Activity.

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In November not much activity on the scifi front.

While driving I have been listening to “Dragon’s Fire” by Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey.

Listening to audio books during driving makes for a much more pleasant “activity” than listening to the radio. The radio has too much noise and too much advertising nowadays.

In December there will be some watch/listen activity.

I am looking forward to watching the 3rd season of “His Dark Materials” on HBO Max. The first episode of this has just been released.

Further, I just started watching “1899” on Netflix, and the first episode was quite interesting.

There will be a bit of Christmas reading.

I do look forward to the winter solstice, then the very short days start getting longer.

Some Activity in August.

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Here is a bit about my activity in August.

I finished watching season 1 of “The Man in the High Castle”

This did not catch on strongly with me, but I may still do some more, but it is not high priority.

Rating 6/10.

On the recommendation from a participant of the Fantasticon this year, and another friend I watched season 1 (until now) of “Station Eleven”

While it was interesting enough to finish the season, it did not catch me as much as I have the impression from the recommendations. There was a lot of time jumping (not time travel), and it took some time to get used to.

Rating 7/10

Having liked “Game of Thrones” very well, I started watching the spin-off “House of Dragons”. The first two episodes aired in August, and I like it enough to continue watching. A rating will have to wait until the season is done.

 

Then there is “The Sandman” (season 1) on Netflix. This is an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s comic/graphic novel of the same name.

I have not read the source material, but I have read some Neil Gaiman stuff (and liked it), and seen some TV with him involved in the writing, and I always liked it.

First of all, from the very beginning this feels very much like Neil’s writing. I love the acting and cinematography of this. Episode 6 is a solid highlight of the season.

I am definitely hoping for a continuation, but hopes are moderate, given the tendency of Netflix to cancel shows after a season or two.

Having said that, this first season stands very well on its own.

Rating 10/10

I finished re-listening to the audio book “Moreta, Dragon Lady of Pern” by Anne McCaffrey. I enjoyed it very well as late evening listening, as well as listening to it while driving.

Rating 8/10.

The progress in reading The Expanse novels is slow, as there are some other summer activities going on.

Non scifi activities:

Due to the heat wave I have not done a massive lot, but now it seems to cool down, and I should continue building my system for partial coverage of my electricity needs with solar power. More about this in another post.

The Expanse TV Show Is Over.

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Today I watched the series finale of the TV series.

I have not (yet) read the book series by James S.A. Corey, so I cannot compare the two.

I like the series, even if the final (6th) season was too short. Lots of threads were closed, but some are still open, should the series get a continuation at some stage.

I cannot fully recall the first seasons, so at some stage a re-watch of the series is in order I think getting and reading the book series may be a good idea.

Watching Activity January to April, 2020

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This year has been crazy.

I managed to go to a single convention before our lives were turned upside-down by the COVID-19 pandemic. I expect to be more or less isolated, at least until the end of this year, as I am in the group with higher risk of complications if I catch the virus.

During the isolation I had expected to watch more films and TV series, but following the news and building some electronics projects has taken more time than I expected. Here is the list for January to April 2020:

TV series:

Re-watch of Sense8. As always, excellent.

DC: Arrow, seasons 6 and 7. Pretty good. 8/10

DC: Titans, season 2. 7/10

Forbrydelsen (English title: The Killing, Danish crime drama) Season 1. 8/10

DC: Crisis on Infinite Earths, This year’s cross over mini series. I liked it. 8/10

Matador (Danish drama series from the late 70s, early 80s) (English title: Monopoly (as the board game)) Very good. 9/10

DC: Black Lightning, Season 3. I like it a lot. 8/10

Kingdom (Korean SF/Netflix) season 2. Good story. 8/10

Re-watch of Babylon 5, seasons 1, 2 and 3. As always excellent. 9/10

Film:

Marvel: Venom

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. 8/10

That’s it. Maybe I will get to read/watch etc some Hugo Award nominees.

I am glad that J. Michael Straczynski’s autobiography “Becoming Superman” was nominated. It was a stunning read, even if I knew some details.

New : Watched and Read, January 2019

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I am going to try something new on the blog :

Making a few notes on what I have watched, read and/or listened to, month by month, mostly with personal ratings.

There is the possibility of making separate posts about particular seasons or books.

Here is my list of genre related activities for January, 2019 :

Finished seasons :
Chronicles of Shannara Seasons 1 and 2 (7/10)
Into The BadlandsTV (seasons 1-3) (7/10)
Riverdale S1 (7/10)
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina S1 (including xmas special) (8/10)
Titans S1 (7/10)
The Flash S4 (8/10)
Arrow S3 (re-watch) (7/10)
MarvelRunaways S1 (7/10)
ThePunisher Season 2 (7/10)
Black Lightning Season 2. I realized it continued in February, so deduct it here and I will add it to Watching in Progress

Watching in progress :
StarTrek Discovery S2 1 ep per week
Roswell New Mexico in progress one ep per week

Magicians S4 – weekly episodes

Black Lightning Season 2

Watched with friends :
Highlander S2 in progress (re-watch for me)
Jeremiah S1 in progress (re-watch for me)
Pine Gap S1 (8/10)
Berlin Station (in progress)

 

Reading :
Book 1 of the Broken Earth trilogy by N.K.Jemesin
“The Fifth Season”

 

13 seasons of TV finished, some long, some intermediate, and several short ones in one month, as well as a novel. Quite a bit, but I expect February to have a little less genre activity, due to other activities taking over.

 

50 years of “2001 – A Space Odyssey” – an incomplete review.

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Yesterday I went to a 50th anniversary show of the classic “2001 – A Space Odyssey”.
I got the ticket late, on the same day, so the seat was not ideal – 4th row from the screen and to the side, so I had to turn the head to view the centre of the screen. This did not detract from the enjoyment of seeing the film on a big screen for the first time since it had its premiere in Denmark 50 years ago.
Since then I have seen it a few times on DVD, and it is a different experience.
Director Stanley Kubrick is, of course a legendary film maker, and was nominated for several Oscars.
In true Oscar comittee fashion, the only Oscar he received was for 2001. Further, in true Oscar comittee fashion regarding science fiction movies, the Oscar he was awarded was for the special effects, and not for the film per se.
Of course, the film was not entirely created by Kubrick, it was a collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke, a legendary figure in science fiction.
Having a fond memory of my 15 year old self seeing the film when it premiered I could be a bit apprehensive, does it really hold up ?
I find that it does hold up very well. Seeing those iconic images and hearing the music of this classic was very enjoyable.
The film has been said to be very slow, and in comparison with modern films it is true. Kubrick tells the story in a slow, deliberate way, giving you time to digest the beautiful imaging and the accompanying music. I very much like Kubrick’s cinematography in the film.
Occasionally the film does show its age, for example the imaging of the moon, and Jupiter and its moons could be done much better with the images available today. However, we must remember that the film was made before the moon landings and the space probes’ visits to the outer planets, so the astronomical imaging of the film must be forgiven.
The science and technology of the film is, with one notable exception, very realistic in keeping with the concept of hard science fiction. From the floating pen in weightlessness to the silence of space. In some of the space scenes there is not even any music, just eerie silence. Sometimes we hear (the astronaut’s) breath in some of the space scenes. We wre told, and I did not know, that the breath we hear is Kubrick’s own breathing.
Then there is HAL. The massive A.I. computer with excellent speech synthesis, an claiming never to make mistakes. What happens when HAL makes an apparent mistake ? It is probably up to the viewer to decide which is tha case, a mistake by the A.I. or a deliberate misdirection. I would say that this looks like a deliberate “mistake” by HAL, when “he” says that “he” cannot let the astronauts endanger the mission. Also, I see echoes of this kind of A.I. logic in the modern TV series “Person of Interest”, where the A.I. may take steps to eliminate human intervention, because “humans are prone to error”.
The exception to the strict science and technology is, of course the monolith(s), every scene with that has spiritual/religious overtones, in the imagery as well as the music (or sound effects), and it is the important link that binds all aspects of the film together, from the dawn of mankind to the “birth” of the star child.
The sparing use of dialogue is also interesting, not many films (if any) in the modern age would dare to have about 25 minutes of no dialogue in the beginning of the film *and* about 25 minutes without dialogue in the end of the film.
One aspect of going to see this film was n ot the film in and of itself, but the audience. I think that about 80% of the audience was not even born when this film premiered, but they came because of its allure as one of the great classics.
Much more could be said about this re-premiere, but now I will leave you to your own thoughts.
I enjoyed this re-watch very much, and I will say that it passed the test of time.
I rate the film 10/10 strange monoliths.

Con Report Fantasticon 2018 in Copenhagen

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My Dutch friend Jarsto and I had decided to go to the Fantasticon, so we both had week end tickets, and went to register Friday evening.
The theme for this years Fantasticon was Steam Punk, and it was quite fun to see people dressing up.
It was good to meet many old scifi friends, and get to meet a few new ones.

Saturday :
I went to the con, arriving about 1230.
More chatting with other fans, and then attending two program points :
Author interview with Lavie Tidhar, who was quite interesting and amusing to listen to. I just might find some of his books to read.
The second was Edmund Schluessel who talked a bit about cosmology, and told the story of two Danish astronomers :
Tycho Brahe who made as accurate measurements of the stars and planet’s positions and movements as is possible without telescopes. Yes, he did that before the invention of telescopes. He provided a massive amont of data, but did not d9o too much with it, but Johannes Kepler could use the data to form his theory and formulas for the movements of tha planets.
Then the talk went into measring the speed of light. Old measurements made with distances on Earth yielded no measurable delay, and light speed was deemed to be infinite, or in any case, not measurable. That was about to change.
Ole Römer who did use a telescope, among others to watch the moons of Jupiter. He noticed a discrepancy in the timing of eclipses of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, and by seeing the difference in timing when Jupiter was near conjunction with the sun, and in opposition to the sun, he measured the offset in timing and arrived at the conclusion that light does indeed have a finite speed. His result, made with the instrumentation and math of 1676.
He arrived at a speed of 200 000km/sec, which is excellent, considering the instuments used, and within a margin of about 30%.
I live a few km from the remains of Römer’s old observatory, and the Kroppedal museum nearby with some of the instruments used in the observatory, and asked if he knew about it. He did not, and I offered to bring him there for a visit, if he should visit Denmark again. He liked the idea, so we exchanged contact information.
After the talk we had an interesting conversation about science fiction and science in general, so I had an excellent Saturday at the con.

Sunday :
I was arriving a bit earlier than on Saturday, and, as usual having some talks with other fans.
In the afternoon there was a recording of a podcast by two groups. The Danish “Hva’ Fan” podcast and the Swedish “Fandompodden” , making a single podcast, spoken mostly in English. I took some pictures of the recording session.
Finally there war an interview with and a reading by the Danish writer Marie Ladefoged.
I came home with 3 books from the convention, two by Marie Ladefoged (in Danish), and one by Justina Robson.
I had a fun time, and I am looking forward to going to more conventions next year.

Transcript of JMS’ Announcement of a B5 Movie

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Jan M Schroeder has just finished a transcript from the JMS announcement. She has encouraged sharing, so I bring it here as well :

Updated 2014-08-10 due to a glitch.

“Whew! Okay, I’ve finally transcribed the relevant portions from my audio recording:

Quote:

JMS recaps what’s coming up and then:

So we’ve been having a really, really good year at Studio JMS. And where that comes in handy – where it’s kind of important involves this (B5 logo comes on screen). So… Fact: When I made the Babylon 5 deal with Warner Bros. it was just short of indentured servitude. Financially, I’ll never seen a dime out of Babylon 5 ever. I have no problems with that; I knew what I was signing when I go into it, but I mention it to piss them off every once in a while. One thing that I was able to withhold was the film rights. I still own the movie rights to Babylon 5. I’ve been pushing Warner’s for the last…ever since the early cretaceous period…to “Let’s do a Babylon 5 movie – a proper big budget feature film.” And they’ve always dragged their feet [because] that’s what Warner Bros. does. They knew that they had the upper hand because I couldn’t take it to any other studio because these days all the studios want all the rights. So if I brought it to say, Sony or Fox, they’d want the TV rights which Warner Bros. controls. Warner Bros. will never give those rights up so we were always handcuffed by that.

Turns out, however, there’s one studio in Los Angeles…Distributors, by the way, don’t care about the TV rights. Distributors just [care] about the movie, they don’t care about the TV part. There’s one studio in town that doesn’t care if it doesn’t have the TV rights…that wants to see this movie made and will do it with or without Warner Bros. (Studio JMS logo comes on screen).
Here’s the plan: We’re going to have, through Studio JMS, at least two, maybe three TV series on the air next year. We’re going to have at least one or two movies going ahead. And we’ll use that to parlay serious investment in the studio. I’m not talking Kickstarter, I’m talking about one hundred million dollars, two hundred million dollars; we already have people who are lined up and interested in doing that.

So in 2015 I will write a Babylon 5 screenplay. I’ll be giving Warner Bros. the opportunity – if they want to step up, “Help yourself”. If they don’t, 2016: We make it. I’m not going to wait around for more of our cast members to die. So that’s the long term plan and those are the current updates on everything that’s going on right now.

Question from a fan: Asked if JMS might crowd-fund for a million of the investment so that fans can be part of it.

JMS: I would rather not. Here’s the reason why, though. I come from the ranks of fandom – I’m as rank as any of you. To me, much as I understand that Kickstarter and crowd-sourcing are a way for those outside to get involved with the process, show their appreciation for the process, I am resistant to that lure because it feels to me like taking advantage of the fans and I have a hard time with that on a moral and ethical basis. I’d rather have an investor come up and say “Here’s a check for a hundred million dollars” – which I would gladly take, by the way; if anyone in the audience happens to have one of those lying around, let me know – than to come to the fans and try to get it. Science fiction fans, and horror fans, to a degree, are the most exploited folks out there. “Line up, buy the merchandise, watch the show.” And I just see this money suck happening. So the answer is no.

Question from a fan: Are you considering a reboot to bring in new viewers or are you thinking of a continuation with the cast and crew from the original series.

JMS: It would have to be a reboot because it’s now been twenty-plus years since we started that show and some of the age ranges wouldn’t always work with some of the characters. So we’d have to move a few people around. But what I want to do is use the original cast one way or the other and move a few things around. I’d love to see Bruce as President of the Earth Alliance; that would be the perfect role for him.

I love playing around with the cast anyway. The one story that I wanted to do for the original B5 and they wouldn’t let me do it was, when Londo was injured and had this dream sequence, I wanted to have different actors play different roles. So Jerry Doyle would play Londo. Claudia Christian would play Delenn and Delenn (Mira) would play Ivanova. Peter Jurasik would play Jerry Doyle’s role. Andreas Katsulas would be the Commander of the Station and Bruce would be G’Kar. They said, “People would be way too confused.” JMS: “They won’t be confused, trust me! Listen, they have the intelligence for this.” It was the only story that they said “No, no, no, no and by the way, no.” The chance to [ ] play around with the cast and have some fun with it could be a good thing.
Any errors are mine. Feel free to share.

Jan “