As mentioned over on Boing-Boing, the Science-Fiction Museum in Seattle is looking for someone to help out in its education department. Not surprisingly, a “keen interest in American popular culture” is required, but before we all start brushing up on our episode guides, so is “2-3 years experience conducting work-place training programs and/or classroom teaching” and “knowledge of educational theories and museum interpretation techniques.” Oh well.
Worth mentioning as well is the museum’s current exhibition featuring some awesome old-school robot designs (think Robbie the Robot meets Andy Warhol), which is open until October 26.
The summer movie season is upon us, and I’m looking forward to watching a bunch of science fiction movies over the next few weeks. Batman, Hellboy, X-Files, Babylon A.D. are all getting the full blockbuster promotional treatment. Chances are though that some of them will be overrated, which got me to thinking about some of the most underrated movies I’ve seen. I love underrated movies: for whatever reason you plop yourself down in front of the screen not expecting much and then: “Hey! This is pretty good!” Here’s my top ten — what are your suggestions?
Silent Running (1972): Although a little preachy, an uncompromising ending rescued the movie from cheesiness as the spaceborne remnants of Earth’s forests face destruction.
The Quiet Earth (1985): Twenty years after I first saw it, the enigmatic ending of this Last-Man-On-Earth tale still sticks in my mind.
Last Night (1998): Another movie with a haunting ending, it follows the lives of a handful of people in the final hours before the Earth is destroyed.
eXistenZ (1999): Overshadowed by The Matrix when it was released, this virtual reality tale is wickedly imaginative.
Pitch Black (2000): Although it spawned a sprawling sequel, the movie that introduced the character of the lethal Riddick was a tight thriller that relied on psychology more than special effects.
Underworld (2003): I loved the surprisingly rich backstory that gave a war between vampires and werewolves some real weight.
The Fountain (2006): Another movie that, whatever other flaws it may have had, paid off with a great ending.
Stardust (2007): Peppered with wry humor — and with romantic leads that manage not to irritate.
Sunshine (2007): The on-screen physics didn’t make sense, but the psychology of a crew pushed to extremes by their environment worked for me.
The latest cinematic version of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth opens this Friday, staring the ever-likeable Brendan Frasier. Frasier’s character, (Professor Trever Anderson), his nephew and local Icelandic guide find themselves having hair-raising adventures as they voyage through underground seas and landscapes populated with all manner of bizzare plants and animals. Verne’s original book was published in 1864, a time when quite a few people took very seriously the idea that the Earth was hollow–and inhabited. In this they were inspired by a scientific proposal by Edmund Halley (of Halley’s comet fame) that turned out to be not completely off the mark.
Ah, Bionic Woman, we hardly knew you. Wounded by plummeting ratings after an initial strong showing and finished off by the writer’s strike, Bionic Woman proved that “reimagined” isn’t always better, with the show lasting just eight episodes compared to the original The Bionic Woman‘s 59 episodes. However, there’s better news in real-life bionics, with researchers at Georgia Tech announcing they have found a way to make metal implants more compatible with the human body.
When writers need to indicate that their super-advanced-spaceship crew are just as mystified by some alien artifact as you are, they often fall back on the tried and tested exclamation of “It’s made of some unknown element!” This always caused my eyes to roll—after all the last gap in the periodic table of the elements was filled in 1923 and while scientists do compete to add more artificially created elements to the bottom of the periodic table, these elements are incredibly unstable, with half-lives typically measured in fractions of a second. And even if one of these new elements were stable, they’d all be much heavier than lead, whereas, when handled by the spaceship crew, the alien artifact tends to behave more as if was made of materials with, perhaps, the density of plywood or plastic.
But now a group of Dutch researchers at the University of Delft have created substances that behave like totally a new type of element. (more…)
Our Comic-Con panel is on! Currently confirmed panelists include Jaime Paglia, creator and executive producer of Eureka, and newly minted Discover blogger Phil “Bad Astronomy” Plait.
We’re still pursuing a couple of additional special guests that we’re very excited about so watch this space for updates.
It slides into view, slowly filling the frame: a giant spaceship, bristling with nacelles, antennas and other devices of unknown purpose. A deep rumbling pushes your sound system’s bass response to the limit. After a length of time, as determined by a complex interplay between how much awe or menace the director is trying to convey and the size of the special effects budget, a collection of glowing engines finally passes into view.
Sometime in the future, a group of renegade scientists and technologists will take a time machine to now. They're spilling the secrets of tomorrow here at Discover's Science Not Fiction blog.
▪ Malcolm MacIver is a bioengineer at Northwestern University who studies the neural and biomechanical basis of animal intelligence. He consults for sci-fi films (Tron Legacy, Joss Whedon's The Avengers), and was the science advisor for Caprica. He covers AI and robotics for Science Not Fiction.
▪ Kyle Munkittrick (Web, Twitter) is program director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He covers transhumanism.
As mentioned over on Boing-Boing, the Science-Fiction Museum in Seattle is looking for someone to help out in its education department. Not surprisingly, a “keen interest in American popular culture” is required, but before we all start brushing up on our episode guides, so is “2-3 years experience conducting work-place training programs and/or classroom teaching” and “knowledge of educational theories and museum interpretation techniques.” Oh well. 
The 
Ah, 
When writers need to indicate that their super-advanced-spaceship crew are just as mystified by some alien artifact as you are, they often fall back on the tried and tested exclamation of “It’s made of some unknown element!” This always caused my eyes to roll—after all the last gap in the periodic table of the elements was 
Our 
