For fans of the original Star Trek, the fight between Kirk and a Gorn warrior in the episode “Arena” is a thing of weird beauty. Well, as beautiful as a slow-motion, clearly choreographed fight between an actor and a stunt man in a rubber suit can be, anyway.
Now, 46 years later, it’s time for a rematch. Yes, really.
(Source: Wired)
Futuristic Ice Age thriller Snowpiercer could turn out to be the District 9 of 2013. Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s first English-language flick, like Neil Blombkamp’s thoughtful alien invasion from 2009, operates far outside the Marvel/DC/vampire/zombie nexus that inspires most big Hollywood spectacles.
Judging from a spare concept art teaser offered on the film’s Korean website uncovered by TFS, Joon-ho can be expected to extend his reach as the rare filmmaker who combines art house subtlety with killer suspense instincts.
Read more about the breakout sci-fi spectacle @ Underwire!
(Source: Wired)
Science fiction was stuck in a complacent groove by the 1980s. You could go into a bookstore and find Arthur C. Clarke’s next Odyssey installment or Isaac Asimov’s books about the three laws of robotics. Robert Heinlein was still churning out sex and philosophy.
But despite the efforts of a variety of literary insurgencies, science fiction felt very much like it did 20 or 30 years before. It was a La-Z-Boy-recliner experience of the future. Competent men of science did competent things, aerospace was the coolest tech, and politics revolved around the conflicts of nation states.
(Source: Wired)
The science fiction genre was always an inexact fit for the kaleidoscopic enthusiasms of Ray Bradbury. Closer to Borges and Calvino than Asimov and Heinlein, he was a carnival-barker poet of the human condition in all its forms — but as befits a consciousness blooming in what some historians call the Age of Science, the era’s themes and curiosities inevitably shaped his work.
Wired peers at some of our favorite Bradbury stories through the lens of what’s now scientifically known. Of course, as he wrote several hundred short stories and more than 30 books, we’ve only scratched the surface, so please suggest your own favorites over at Wired Science!
(Source: Wired)
What happens when Captain Picard and the Enterprise crew finally cross galactic paths with Doctor Who‘s Eleventh Time Lord and his cosmic travelers? All-out war, thanks to a killer comic book team-up between the Borg and the Cybermen in eight-issue miniseries Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation 2.
Read more (and see more of the comic!) @ Underwire.
(Source: Wired)
A sample of what you’ll find at The Art of Ctrl-Z, an exhibit of fantastical works by movie and game artists who usually channel their creativity on behalf of someone else’s project.
(Source: Wired)
