This is Sci-Fi, Issue 19 is a sampling of science fiction news across the mediums. From movies to books, to real life, and any bits in between that I can think of to list. This is by no means a comprehensive list of what’s happening, but it should whet your appetite!
This is Sci-Fi’s Weekly Quote:
“Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny. Inventing plausible new realities is what the genre is all about. One starts from a hypothesis and then builds out the logic, adding detail and incident to give substance to imaginary structures. In that respect, science fiction and theology have much in common.”
― Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
Science Fiction Movies
Featured New Release: Anti Matter
Release Date: September 9th, 2017
Anti Matter (AKA Worm) is a sci-fi noir take on the Alice in Wonderland tale. Ana, an Oxford PhD student, finds herself unable to build new memories following an experiment to generate and travel through a wormhole. The story follows her increasingly desperate efforts to understand what happened, and to find out who – or what – is behind the rising horror in her life.
Starring: Yaiza Figueroa, Philippa Carson, Tom Barber-Duffy
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Coming Soon (September 29th, 2017)
Flatliners
Science Fiction Books
An Excess Male – Maggie Shen King – September 12th, 2017
From debut author Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male is the chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, marriage, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes of the classic The Handmaid’s Tale and When She Woke.
Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son.
Now 40 million of them can’t find wives. China’s One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will not have a family of their own. An Excess Male is one such leftover man’s quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve himself, his small business, and in turn, his country, his chance at love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter matchmaking talks at the lowest rung as a third husband—the maximum allowed by law. Only a single family—one harboring an illegal spouse—shows interest, yet with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everything—walls, streetlights, garbage cans—are listening, and men, excess or not, are dispensable to the State. Wei-guo must reach a new understanding of patriotism and test the limits of his love and his resolve in order to save himself and this family he has come to hold dear.
In Maggie Shen King’s startling and beautiful debut, An Excess Male looks to explore the intersection of marriage, family, gender, and state in an all too plausible future.
Goodreads Science Fiction Giveaways
(Covers link to the Goodreads pages)
Science Fiction Poll
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Science Fiction Trivia
With the recent burst of solar flares and storms (I might have the technical names wrong, I don’t science) it reminded me of something called The Carrington Effect.
In 1859 there was a solar storm so powerful that studies have shown that if it happened today the effects would be far more widespread due to society’s reliance on electrical devices. A similar solar burst in 2012 could have possibly done so but it passed by Earth without directly hitting it. The solar storm was observed by two amateur astronomers independently of each other. Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson. They each published a paper on it independently and each showed a drawing of the phenomena before the Royal Astronomical Society. I don’t know why Hodgson was left off the naming.
The more interesting phenomena connected with it were auroras that were so bright that it seemed like daytime and could be seen much farther away than normal. Telegraphs failed and would shock the operators. Telegraph pylons would throw sparks. Some operators reported being able to send and receive messages despite being cut off from the power supply.
In 2013 a study was made determining that if a similar event were to occur at that time the cost to the United States alone was estimated up to 2.6 trillion dollars. And that was 2013. I’d be curious to see a current cost report.
To wrap up I’d like to apologize for the brevity of the trivia section as (ironically) my internet service failed last night. I wanted to go more in-depth about it.
Science Fiction on the Web
- Slate’s month long series focuses this time predicting the future in science fiction
- Interested in science fiction anthologies from particular cultures? Check out Geeks of Doom review of Iraq+100
- ICYMI: Jerry Pournelle died. Verge speaks briefly on it here
- Seth MacFarlane talks with The New Yorker about the struggle to make science fiction funny
- WIRED recommends these podcasts if you like Sci-Fi and NPR
- Outer Places recounts Joe Haldeman’s talk from Escape Velocity 2017 on the creation of The Forever War.
Fun post and so much news. I enjoyed the original Flatliners movie. I’ll probably watch this new one to see what they do with it.