Blogs / Science Not Fiction

I have been laid low for the last few days by some dreadful lurgy I caught on the plane back from San Diego, but people have been hard at work behind the scenes putting together this edit of the video of our “Science Behind Science Fiction Panel” at this year’s Comic-con. From left to right you have Kevin Grazier (science advisor to Eureka and Battlestar Galactica), Jaime Paglia (co-creater and executive producer of Eureka), Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy blogger) and myself. We talked about how science makes its way into a script, how scientific accuracy is maintained (or not) and the value of retconning. Enjoy!

Independent observers confirm that our panel was “awesome.” Many, many thanks to Jaime Paglia (Eureka), Kevin Grazier (BSG) and our very own Phil Plait for making the magic happen.

We also went out for dinner with the Eureka writing crew, including Jaime Paglia and Eric Wallace. For the record, any time you want to go out for a few bottles of Sangiovese and a couple hours of talking about Doctor Who, Torchwood, Veronica Mars, the OC and Friday Night Lights, you can count me in. For the complete inside dope from Eric (including their potentially disastrous Comic Con A/V snafu), go to Eureka Unscripted.

More personal Comic Con highlights after the jump.

(more…)

We had a great panel yesterday chewing over how great science can make science fiction. Thanks to Jaime Paglia, co-creater and executive producer of Eureka (Eureka’s third season premieres on the SCIFI channel on Tuesday), Kevin Grazier (science advisor to Eureka and Battlestar Galactica), and our very own Bad Astronomy blogger, Phil Plait.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to have some video from the panel before long: what’s clear is that on Battlestar and Eureka, while making a good show that people will want to watch is obviously their first priority, the producers and writers really do care about getting the science right — which means lots of grist for Science Not Fiction to blog about in the months to come. Yay!

First of all, an insight (and some elementary logic) about Comic Con: Everybody loves Japanese stuff. Everybody loves porn. Everybody loves Japanese porn.

And onto the Torchwood panel:

(more…)

Despite the huge hype, The Dark Knight was definitely not overrated. The movie has heft and complexity, while never letting its momentum flag. And while everyone is raving about Heath Ledger’s (admittedly brilliant) turn as The Joker, spare some props for Aaron Eckhart, whose performance as Harvey Dent/Two Face brought a convincing depth to this tragic character.

Batman, being a regular (if insanely fit and wealthy) human, rather than a mutant or an alien, has always had to rely on a collection of gadgets and other machines when battling his foes. In The Dark Knight, Batman relies on a distributed sensor network to track The Joker, an idea which is rapidly becoming science fact. In fact, within just a few hours of watching the movie, I found myself enmeshed in a location tracking network at the HOPE hacker conference hosted by 2600 magazine over the weekend in New York City. (The word “hacker” is sometimes taken to be synonymous with “computer criminal,” but it was hackers who, for example, built large parts of the digital infrastructure of the Internet and the World Wide Web and brought personal computing to the masses.)

(more…)

Confirming it’s status as the science-fiction mecca, Comic-con has completely sold out. As I type, we’re working away here to give con-goers a great panel on Thursday about how great science can inspire great science fiction, with insights from Jaime Paglia (executive producer and creator of Eureka), Kevin Grazier (science advisor to Eureka and Battlestar Galactica) and our very own Phil Plait (creator of the Bad Astronomy blog). The official press release is after the jump, and if you can’t make Comic-con this year, don’t worry, we’ll be blogging all the latest news from the floor.

(more…)