Much to the wailing, self-flagellation and face-ashening of sci-fi fans around the world, Journeyman—NBC's quirky little time-travel show—was brutally cancelled late last month, despite being one of the best new sci-fi shows on the air. Various fan campaigns kicked off at the time to keep the series' pulse weakly throbbing through the WGA strike, but to no avail. Networks, it seems, are unwilling to take chances on shows that aren't immediate hits.

Yet Journeyman's fans are still fighting in an effort reminscent of that by Firefly's armada of Browncoats. The latest attempt by the Journeymen to get NBC to realize what boneheads they are? Fans are coordinating a massive attack on NBC's official website... an attack of traffic.

Continue reading "Save Journeyman by Streaming It" »

28 Days Later really opened the flood gates on the whole "infectious virus gets entire country quarantined" sci-fi sub-genre. I Am Legend partially took this tack, and now director Neil Marshall's own foray behind the borders of a quarantined country follows suit. The film, called Doomsday, stars an eclectic cast including Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins (!), Malcolm McDowell, Adrian Lester, and Sean Pertwee, for a premier on Friday, March 14.

Continue reading "Doomsday Is Coming" »

I don't know how many times I've purchased the original Star Trek episodes over the years on home video. Well, actually I do: twice. But given the expense involved, even that number seems like once too many. I had my reasons, of course—DVD is so much nicer than VHS—but when the HD-DVD versions of Star Trek season one came out, I went the path of Jean-Luc Picard. The line must be drawn here... here and no further!

I'm starting to feel pretty prophetic for that decision. On one hand, the first season of HD-DVD Star Trek sold so well that CBS is now planning on following suit with the next two seasons.

Continue reading "Star Trek Gets Two More Seasons on HD-DVD" »

There was a time when it seemed reasonable to expect that skyscrapers would partly serve as departure and arrival terminals for zeppelin travelers. The most iconic skyscraper of all, the Empire State Building, was even planned with a zeppelin port at the top. Unfortunately, the Hindenberg Disaster happened, and attaching large containers of flammable gas to skyscrapers no longer seemed like the jolly good idea it once was.

Today, the dream is dead. Skyscrapers, at best, have helicopter launch pads. But as late as 1939, architects were still thinking of making the towers of gotham into way stations for zeppelin and even airline traffic. This design for a skyscraper-top airport is retro-futurism at its best. Just think how massive that skyscraper would have to be: half a mile wide at least.

Sigh. I miss the days when architecture took its queue from Bruegel the Elder's "Tower of Babel."

Skyscraper Airport for City of Tomorrow (Nov, 1939) [Modern Mechanix] (via SF Signal)

Lovely sci-fi minx Annalee Newitz over at io9 has employed her constabulary of droogs to invade the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (sort of an international exposition for gadget porn, also known as hell-on-earth to tech journalists). While there, they took some swank shots of Iron Man's copper plated Mark-1 suit, which is just as sexy in the alloy as it is in the recent trailers.

Continue reading "Iron Man Retro Suit in the Alloyed Flesh" »

No one's gotten more out of an association with J.J. Abrams than Jennifer Garner. Long before Abrams turned his attention to science fiction with Lost, Cloverfield and Star Trek XI, Abrams helped catapult Garner to stardom thanks to shows like Felicity and Alias.

Unfortunately, as Abrams turns his creative energies to his more geeky inclinations, he seems to have left Garner far behind. But Garner has recently been doing the interview circuit, not so subtly hinting that she'd love a cameo in Trek XI.

"I just want to be a Klingon in the movie," Garner pleaded to MTV's Movies Blog, insisting that she'd even take a cameo. "I just want to walk through as a Klingon."

I'm all for it: She's definitely got the forehead for such a role.

Jennifer Garner Hopes to Boldly Go to J.J. Abrams' Star Trek [MTV Movies Blog]

• Among Warren Ellis' three laws of robotics: "Robots do not want to have sex with you." Like that's going to stop me!

• Even more Star Wars recreated in a garage.

• There was obviously something of a career lull between Serenity and The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Summer Glau battles a rampaging woolly mammoth.

• SF Universe writes a review of one of their favorite B-movies, The Fiend Without a Face. Judging from the poster, said fiend is a brain with gastropod eye stalks and the tail of a face hugger.

• A compendium post of all of the Cloverfield viral trailers. No, you don't see the monster.