I am at WorldCon! This is the first day of the con, so I suspect there will be more people tomorrow, but there were still quite a few today. The dealer room was a little crowded, but of course these guys didn’t help:
This is an amazing display of model building. Robbie the Robot even moves, lights up, and has audio from "Forbidden Planet"! And if you don’t know what that movie is, go and rent it. It’s a classic science fiction piece from the 50s. Leslie Nielson is the handsome hero. Seriously. It’s a great flick. That’s the fembot from "Metropolis" next to Robbie.
Anyway, I’ve run into a handful of people I know, including Rick Sternbach, who signed my copy of the Star Trek Compendium:
I am such a huge geek fanboy. But there you go. Anyway, I’m giving my general Bad Astronomy talk tomorrow (I make fun of Trek a little bit in it) and I hope I get a nice audience. There’s a pseudoscience panel scheduled at the same time. Sigh. Later I’m on a panel about science as well, so it’ll be a fun day.
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Is that your best side? (sorry ‘better side’)
As a matter of fact, in a fourth dimension, one would need an extra qualifying adjective beyond the ‘good, better, best’, and I have no idea what it should be.
Ivan.
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:44 pm
Hey Phil, what’s going on? I’ve just responded to a blog I haven’t even received yet. Talk about relativity, or not. It’s called “WorldCon Report #1â€, and it was accessed from the little ‘next’ arrowheads in the title of the topic, which was “The Naeye kid in Town”. That had proceeded from the ‘Spam’ thingie, and a couple of others. The daily download into mail has not happened yet, but I suspect it will appear soon.
Have I accidently landed on another of your blogs by mistake, or is the actual blog not ready yet for distribution? If so, then there must be a leak somewhere.
Curious…
Ivan.
August 24th, 2006 at 12:05 am
Mmm, Forbidden Planet. My favorite sci-fi flick ever.
August 24th, 2006 at 5:17 am
You can not call yourself a true sci-fi geek and not have seen Forbidden Planet. Its required!
Can this Robbie reproduce anything from a small sample, like some Kentucky Bourbon?
Who is the robot to the left of Robbie in the picture? It looks like the robot from an episode of Gilligan’s Island.
August 24th, 2006 at 6:38 am
Sorry guy’s Forbidden Planet is pretty bad, the acting is very over the top, and stiff, the effects were too cartoonish, the commander following the not so good Doctors orders too push the plunger before knowing what it did, are all reasons not too like this move, but the most offensive part of the move is the fact that the ONLY WOMAN IN THE MOVIE NEVER TAKES HER CLOTHES OFF! === redneck@zippytech.com ===
August 24th, 2006 at 6:44 am
Metropolis. Best SciFi movie ever. Forbidden Planet was just a rewrite of Shakespears “The Tempest” with added (but admittedly Cool) robot.
August 24th, 2006 at 6:53 am
Hmm… I am a geek from the Heinlein, Asimov, early-Niven, etc. days, but I have to say that SciFi for me just keeps getting better as the acting style presents more realistically, and effects get better. I think Alien, Aliens, Star Wars IV, and maybe the first Matrix are the movies that really struck me with awe. The first Alien is definitely more in the horror genre, but the gritty, dirty, wet space ship was just one of the great movie-ambiences ever.
So was the pseudoscience panel a panel about the state of pseudoscience, or was it a non-critical panel discussing (in seriousness) an actual pseudoscience?
msd
August 24th, 2006 at 6:55 am
Breaking news re: IAU planet decisions. Any news source like cnn.com is carrying the story.
msd
August 24th, 2006 at 7:21 am
Forbidden Planet was Gene Roddenberry’s main inspiration for Star Trek. Compare it directly to “The Cage” and you can see many similarities. Both are excellent moral tales on the dangers lurking in the depths of the mind (which is the REAL final frontier as far as I’m concerned!)
August 24th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Yep, while Phil is hanging out with the sci-fi crowd, Pluto get’s demoted.
August 24th, 2006 at 7:29 am
That cylindrical robot to Robbie’s right is “Satan’s Robot,” which featured in a couple of holodeck fantasies on Star Trek: Voyager. (Tom Paris was running a simulation of a pulpy 1930s sci-fi serial called “Captain Proton.”) It’s sort of a parody of all the sci-fi robot cliches.
August 24th, 2006 at 7:53 am
Enough geekery.. Tell us about pluto!!
August 24th, 2006 at 10:37 am
Benjamin, I thought it was Ned Kelly
August 24th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Did you vote in the Hugo Awards (which you could have provided you became a member of the World Con sufficiently in advance)? Don’t forget you can nominate for next year’s Hugos (and they will almost certainly be mailing you a nomination ballot next year).
August 24th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
Thomas, I loved the reference to Ned Kelly. Funny, my first impression was to the robot in ‘Futurama’, so I am going to have to avoid my Irish relatives for a while.
Ivan.
August 24th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Some of my favorits robots in the BA’s picture! Wonder if Gort was there too.
August 24th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
CHip– yep. Got a picture too, but I can’t post it until I get back home and fix my &((^$## laptop.
August 25th, 2006 at 6:05 am
Um, Phil… I can’t figure out which adjectival swear word ends in double letters. Or is this a new one? Nor can I think of a brand name.
Ivan.
August 25th, 2006 at 8:24 am
I thought that cylindrecal robot was Gort, from The Day the Earth Stood Still, one of the best early SciFi movies ever.
Gary 7
August 25th, 2006 at 11:30 am
Gary, Gort was built remarkably like a man but he had a visor-like window across the face. (If I’m remembering him right…)
August 25th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
And Gort was BIG, as I remember; nearly twice the height of a human. At least he looked like it standing next to Michael Renne (mayhap Mike was short?). My favorite sci-fi is the retitled Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). My second favorite is Miyazaki’s Nausicaa, of the Valley of the Wind. I realize some folks consider this more of a science fantasy, and others don’t want to include animation, but what the hey, it’s MY list.
August 25th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
I remember seeing Forbidden Planet when it first came out (1957?) and it made a huge impression on me – I was about 12 at the time. Having seen it again recently I tend to agree with Rollis regarding the acting & effects but I still think the basic storyline is pretty damn good. And the fact that Anne Francis never took her clothes off was neither here nor there – in that tiny skirt she was near enough naked to get the hormones flowing in this (at the time) 12 year old!!
August 28th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Wish I’d seen you there!
(I did see Rick Sternbach, though)
September 1st, 2006 at 9:44 am
gort was there, along with just about every other really amazing robot creature! a dalek, R2D2 and several others. i’m working on a WorldCon report as well and will be posting it next week with pictures, as will several other people i know. saw phil plait’s “Bad Astronomy” panel and loved it — my first encounter with him, his site and his astronomical philosophy. he’s going to be a regular on my blog list.
December 12th, 2007 at 9:02 am
The robot to the left of Robby is actually the “water heater” robot that showed up in several Republic serials in the 1930′s and 40′s. “King of the Rocketmen (Commando Cody) and “Zombies of the Stratosphere” (the first acting job for Leonard Nimoy!) are prime examples. It’s close to the “Voyager” reproduction, but there are minor differences in the top of the robot, and the “face” plate. (I only know this, because I’m researching it to build a replica of it myself.)