Blogs / Science Not Fiction

It’s going to take a little while for us to fit the video from yesterday’s splendid Mad Science panel through the tubes back to the Hive Overmind Nerve Center (i.e., onto the DISCOVER site), but in the meantime, suffice to say that it was pretty great. The panel featured Jaime Paglia (co-Executive Producer of Eureka), Kevin Grazier (Battlestar Galactica and Eureka science adviser), Jane Espenson (Dollhouse, Battlestar, Caprica, and anything else in sci-fi TV that’s been good lately), Ricardo Gil da Costa (science adviser for Fringe), and Rob Chiappetta and Glenn Whitman (writers for Fringe).

I took notes along the way, so here are a couple of one-liners and insights to whet your appetite (I was writing fast, so apologies if the video later shows I have the wording slightly off):

 “We’ll have hot robot action.” —Jane Espensen, on Caprica

“We don’t want people saying, ‘Gee, if only we’d tortured him harder.’” —Jane Espensen

“The plant episode. Yeah, that was so bad—and it was so good we didn’t do it.” —Jamie Paglia in response to Kevin Grazier’s idea for a Killer Tomatoes episode of Eureka

“We don’t want to cross over into magic.” —Jaime Paglia, explaining Eureka’s rule for limiting the technology on the show

“You usually want to start with something very grounded, so that the viewers think they recognize it, and then you want to push past it,” Rob Chiappetta, on the role of science in Fringe

“It’s easier to get creepy and gross with biology then with astronomy.” —Rob Chiappetta

“You’ve never been to any astronomer parties.” —Phil Plait in response

“Kara just lay down in the grass.” —Jane Espensen, on the ending of Battlestar

io9 has more recappage of our panel over here (and their panel was good, too).

Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey is an animated film that makes use of data from NASA’s Cassini mission.  The movie tells the story of Dave, a solar surfing photo who battles his way through the solar system to save the Cassini probe from evil aliens.

Twelve years in the making, Quantum Quest has cycled through at least a couple of voice casts.  At last year’s Comic Con Quantum Quest panel, producer Harry “Doc” Kloor, a scientist and veteran science fiction writer, announced that he had lined up Digimax Inc., a Taiwanese animation studio, as his partner to finish the film.

At this year’s panel, featuring Bob Picardo, Doug Jones andJanina Gavankar, Kloor announced that the movie will see wide release in February 2010 and will include actual Cassini images, including Enceladus and Titan.

This morning, io9 demonstrated that in addition to putting out an awe-inspiring blog every day, they could also put on a mind-expanding Comic Con panel.  With no Hollywood celebrities and just a couple of special guests, our favorite sci-fi bloggers ran through the TV shows, movies, comics and books of the past year that “blew our minds without blowing up any giant robots.”

Here are a few of their recommendations:

Moon -Duncan Jones’s new movie topped the list for both Annalee Newitz and Meredith Woerner.  Like a lot of the works recommended by the panel, Moon explores what it means to be human in a rapidly approaching era where humanity can be technologically upgraded or artificially created (note: this is not a spoiler, the lead character realizes very early in the film that he is a clone).

Julian Comstock – In this novel, Robert Charles Wilson depicts a 22nd century American that has sunk into barbarism and theocracy.  In response, the hero undermines the regime in part through trying to popularize ideas about Darwin in a world that has forgotten about science.

Rest -  What if someone invented a pill that meant no one would ever have to sleep, with no adverse side effects?  Panel guest Bonnie Burton from StarWars.com picked the Devil’s Due comic Rest, which explores this idea and its implications on society, the environment and mental health.

Wonton Soup – James Stokoe’s comic, recommended by Graeme McMillan, investigates what humans would do if they had to be out in space for a really long time.  Apparently the answers are get high and cook alien recipes.

Infoquake – io9 editor Charlie Jane Anders picked a series of novels by David Louis Edelman.   In Edelman’s future, people can hack and upgrade their own bodies and brains, impacting human relations in both the literal and business senses of the phrase.

Are you at Comic-Con or intending to get there within the next day? Then come tomorrow to Science Not Fiction’s panel, Mad Science, produced in conjunction with Jennifer Ouellette and our partners over at the Science & Entertainment Exchange. Why “mad”? We’ll be looking at science as a double-edged sword, ethically and morally neutral itself, but capable of being used for much good and evil. The panel will be moderated by DISCOVERmagazine.com’s own Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, and includes this star-studded cast:

Jaime Paglia — co-Executive Producer of Eureka
Kevin Grazier — Battlestar Galactica and Vituality science advisor
Jane Espenson — major sci-fi writer/producer: Firefly, Dollhouse, Battlestar, and on and on
Rob Chiappetta and Glenn Whitman — writers for Fringe
Ricardo Gil da Costa — neuroscientist and adviser for Fringe

If you’re convinced, then go to Room 6DE tomorrow (Thursday) July 23rd, 6:00-7:00.

If you’re not yet convinced, consider this: Our panel at last year’s ‘Con was SRO in a 1,000-person room—some folks couldn’t even get in the door—and this year’s panel is studded with even more stars.

For those unfortunate ones who got left behind (like yours truly), don’t mourn too hard: We’ll have the video from the panel posted here soon-ish.

We’ve just heard that we’re going back to Comic Con this summer, with a panel topic and line-up even bigger and better than last year’s event.

We are teaming up with Jennifer Ouellette and the crew at the Science and Entertainment Exchange to produce a panel on “MAD SCIENCE,” i.e. Science as a double-edged sword, ethically and morally neutral in and of itself, but dependent upon who wields it, and how.

Beloved Internet Personality Phil Plait is lined up to moderate (after he gets his tattoo) and we’re expecting guests from Eureka, Battlestar Galactica, Fringe, Stargate: Universe and more.  Watch this space for additional details.

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.

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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!

The hype machine was cranking in Ballroom 20 at Comic-Con this afternoon for Quantum Quest, a 3-D animated feature about “Dave the photon” who leaves the sun to “save his people and save the Cassini spacecraft from the forces of fear and ignorance.”

Clearly, we wish these guys well. Nothing would make us happier at Discover than to have an astronomy movie written by NASA scientists penetrate the public consciousness in some meaningful way.

That being said, we hope they have a good editor, because the amount of information conveyed at this panel was overwhelming.

Here is just a small portion of my notes from the session: (more…)

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:

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Just out of a Comic-con panel celebrating 30 years of the Battlestar Galactica franchise. Present were Richard Hatch (who plays Tom Zarek in the new series and played Apollo in the original); Bear McCreary (who composes the music for the show, and told us that Ron Moore was very specific, for reasons as yet unannounced but which will become clear, about using Dylan’s “Along the Watchtower” as the background music to the season three finale, in which four humans are revealed as cylons); Kevin Grazier (Battlestar’s science advisor and panelist on DISCOVER’s “Science in Science Fiction” panel later today); and, interestingly, Tom DeSanto (best known as the producer of X-Men and Transformers.)

DeSanto was just weeks away from filming his own TV relaunch of Battlestar Galactica in 2001: set construction had begun and FOX had agreed to a pilot. A confluence of events (including 9/11 and problems with X-Men 2) caused the deal with FOX to fall through. This series was intended to be a continuation of the 1979 show, not a complete re-imagining from the ground up, as happened in Ron Moore’s version. DeSanto sketched out the premise of this version: about five years after the end of the original series, the rag tag fleet had a vote and decided to stop searching for Earth, opting instead to build a giant spacestation near an asteroid field. Before long the Cylons are forgotten in the pursuit of commerce and “pleasure domes.” Until another twenty years pass and the Cylons return… Richard Hatch would also have returned in this version — this time as a human being converted into a Cylon hybrid.

One thing remains constant across all the continuations and re-imaginings: no one appears willing to resurrect Galactica 1980.

So the DISCOVER gang has landed at Comic-Con, and forged our way through the madding crowd looking for the cool and quirky. Something that immediately grabbed my eye in amongst the smaller booths of the independent publishers here was The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft, a serialized graphic novel.

I could only get my hands on the first issue, which the creators specially printed as a limited edition to coincide with Comic-con: they are currently negotiating with a publisher about whether or not to distribute The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft as serial or as a single bound novel.

Whatever the outcome of these negotiations, I hope they get it into stores soon, as from what I’ve seen, it’s a terrific voyage into the twisted worlds of Lovecraftian fiction. I’m a big fan of Lovecraft, and even though his work may superficially seem dated, being mostly set in the 1920’s, the themes still resonate strongly today — how do we cope with a universe that is bigger and more mysterious than we can ever truly comprehend?

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In case we haven’t plugged this Comic Con thing enough: our Science Behind the Science Fiction panel is Thursday at 5:30 and features Jaime Paglia (Eureka), Kevin Grazier (Eureka, BSG) and Phil Plait (our beloved Bad Astronomer talking about a very special episode of Dr. Who).

I will also take the opportunity here for a gratuitous swipe at a panel occurring at the same time as ours: Dexter. While I loved Michael C. Hall on Six Feet Under, why is this show at Comic Con? Is Dexter a comic book? Is it science fiction? Is it fantasy? The answer to all of these questions, of course, is no. And haven’t we had enough of serial killers, anti-heroes or not?

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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.

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