pop culture
Trending and current events, topics, and interest in science fiction and technology.
Rewatching... Star Trek: Space Seed
Thursday 16 February 1967 The Enterprise encounters an old 1990s spaceship drifting and sending out a Morse code message. Apparently, in the mid 1990s we had our last World War, a “Eugenics War” where we tried to perfect our race with “selective breeding”. As Spock says, “a strange and violent period” in our history. Thank goodness those days are over, eh?
By Nick Brown9 years ago in Futurism
The Thousandth Happy Haunt
They say that Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth. Even the ghosts in the Haunted Mansion are happy, being called the “happy haunts”. According to the ghost host, the disembodied narrator of the attraction, there are nine-hundred and ninety-nine of them in residence, but he assures everyone, day after day, that there is room for a thousand – he even asks for volunteers. Paul Frees provided the voice of the Ghost Host, delivering dialog such as, “Your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding,” which many agree could only have been written by legendary Imagineer X. Antencio. An unintended consequence of his writing, however, is that since November 2, 1986, the Haunted Mansion's Ghost Host truly became a voice from the beyond, with the death of Paul Frees.
By L. Christopher Bird9 years ago in Futurism
14/1/1967: The Underwater Menace – Part 1
My ongoing mission: to watch classic television fifty years after first broadcast... “You’re not turning me into a fish!” The problem I have with this episode is that Atlantis is presented as if it’s a legend (and indeed referred to as such) when it is in fact a fictional island from a MADE-UP STORY by Plato. The confusion arose when people started to speculate that Plato may have been inspired by a real place. But as far as I’m aware there is no evidence for this, and even if there was such inspiration, that’s all it was. There has never been any such place called Atlantis! So for Doctor Who to have a story set there, well the Doctor might as well visit the ‘legendary’ lands of Narnia or Tatooine or Oz or Pokemon.
By Nick Brown9 years ago in Futurism
12/1/1967: The Squire Of Gothos
My ongoing mission: to watch classic television fifty years after first broadcast... Another week, another red miniskirted yeoman coffee waitress. I didn’t catch her name. Perhaps Kirk knows, perhaps he doesn’t care. Kirk and Sulu suddenly disappear from the Enterprise bridge after a mysterious planet is spotted. Some other crew members beam down to rescue them, and they all end up in this castle, which turns out to be a fake one created by a fake human calling himself Trelane.
By Nick Brown9 years ago in Futurism
Five Experiments That Show Your Universe Is Weird, Really Weird
We take our reality just like we take our tax preparers: solid and dependable, with an aversion to surprises. Experiments during the last few years, however, seem to indicate that our reality is less like a nerdy accountant buried in piles of 1040 forms and more like the half naked, fully drunk performance artist who thrives on not just surprising, but shocking the ever-loving crap out of us.
By Matt Swayne9 years ago in Futurism
Military in Science Fiction
Military in Science Fiction Wrong uniform, wrong rank, wrong weapons, wrong movements, wrong wrong wrong. Common thoughts while reading or watching most fictional stories with military involved and specifically Science Fiction. Most modern western military (remember I said most) don’t use fully automatic assault rifles as a main weapon, it wastes too many rounds too quickly. Nobody refers to special operations units or missions as “Spec Ops”, nobody. And can you please stop making all military personnel two dimensional war fiends.
By Nickolas Rudolph9 years ago in Futurism
Artifacts
Artifacts A common trait that many Science Fiction, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy aficionados seem to share is the love of things. Figurines, statues, props, and day to day objects adorn with our obsessions. They clutter our shelves, walls, table tops, and really any surface that can hang, hold, or display these things. This is not an uncommon behavior for fans of any genre or domain. Sports fans have their stashes of trinkets and garb displaying their colors and love of the game. However, the proverbial geeks of Science Fiction, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy seem to take this to an extraordinary measure.
By Nickolas Rudolph9 years ago in Futurism
Animare
From the Diary of the Imagineer, December 16, 1966: It's like he knew. He knew we would need him, but I have to wonder if we are up to the task. When we recreated Lincoln, we worked with what history had left us, from his life mask to his writings. It is the most accurate recreation of the human figure ever seen, but what we have been tasked with at Ayefive will make that seem like a wind-up toy if we are successful. He left us with volumes more than what history recorded of Lincoln, but right now our project is impossible. We don't even know what we will have to invent to see it to completion. But like he said, doing the impossible – it's kind of fun.
By L. Christopher Bird9 years ago in Futurism
The Philosophy of Westworld
Michael Crichton wrote and directed Westworld for the big screen in 1973. That same decade, in 1976, an adjunct professor named Julian Jaynes made the bestseller list with a surprising title: The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. You wouldn’t think that a book with a name like that would become such a popular success. Yet, there it was. In 2016, when Westworld came to the small screen in the re-imagined HBO series, you wouldn’t imagine Jaynes getting heard from again. Especially since bicameralism wasn’t even mentioned in the Michael Crichton’s original film. Yet, there he was. Early on in Westworld’s first season Dr. Ford, one of the creators of the park, explains how he and his co-founder Arnold used a “debunked” theory about the origins of consciousness to bootstrap A.I. The scientific community didn’t recognize bicameralism as an explanation for the origins of the human mind, but, as Dr. Ford suggests, it could be useful for building an artificial one. Thousands of people—perhaps more—started Googling for “bicameral mind.” Bloggers and YouTube channels capitalized on the sudden interest by writing articles and introductory videos about this weird, arguably psychedelic theory of consciousness. Suddenly everyone was interested.
By Jeremy Johnson9 years ago in Futurism
Lessons from The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror
The social commentary and criticism found across episodes of The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror invite viewers to self-reflect on their own social judgments. In particular, The Twilight Zone’s “The Eye of the Beholder” (1960) and Black Mirror’s “Men Against Fire” (2016) both raise awareness to public fears of those who are deemed different or abnormal.
By Erica McCrystal9 years ago in Futurism
