A complaint often levelled at Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) is that the worlds he describes are ecologically unsound. His heroes often encounter large predators, but animals which are their more usual diet are seldom mentioned. I feel this criticism is a little unfair. ERB's narrators are usually busy rescuing princesses, so have greater concerns than […]
“The multinationals' intelligence needs . . . are not much different from those of the United States, France or any other country. . . .Indeed, any discussion of the intelligence battles among the CIA, KGB, and their satellite agencies will be incomplete if it doesn't describe the increasingly important roles played by the apparats of […]
One of the TV channels has been showing re-runs of “Blake’s Seven”. This was a memorable series, often for the wrong reasons! In the episode “Seek-Locate-Destroy”, the character Travis has a weapon taken from him. For no apparent reason, Travis is treatening his prisoner with a tiny pistol rather than any of the many other […]
Recently I have read a number of stories that feature humans in or from the far future. How might such “Future Humans” differ from modern humans? Physical changes are likely to be the product of human engineering and technology rather than natural selection and evolution. Better Brains Future Human is often depicted with an enlarged […]
“He and Wynne were living at a tube rack in Battersea. She could have afforded better; he insisted that they live within his means. There were about two hundred plastic sleep tubes stacked in what had once been a warehouse. Each was three meters long; the singles were a meter and a half in diameter, […]
When he had filled out all the homesteading forms he had of course put down his phone number, since this was as much a part of him as was his name. Everyone was given a phone number at birth, and it was his for life. With the computer-controlled circuits anyone, anywhere on a planet, could […]
Version 2.3 I grew-up watching “Six Million Dollar Man”, and bionics were also a staple of early cyberpunk. In common usage, “bionics” refers to fitting humans or animals with mechanical/robotic parts. Such “old school” bionics are seldom encountered in Transhuman Space (THS), their role mainly being served by biomods. It can, of course, be argued […]
Sy: “All you need is magnetic coating from a floppy disk…The photodiodes of a VHS tape…And an 8-track recording of The Monkees' D-D-D-Daydream Believer.” Harley Quinn S2E12 If you watch modern movies, you may notice the frequent tendency for some character to remark something along the lines of “my phone cannot get a signal”. Peril […]
If a movie is set on a space ship or space station, at some point there is a good chance that someone or something will be blown out of an airlock. Or, some character, depressed or guilt-racked, will attempt to eject themselves from an airlock. Or someone will threaten to or attempt to “space” or […]
I once read a novel that was set in the clouds of Saturn (or possibly Jupiter, it has been many years!). In best space opera tradition giant warships clashed amide swarms of dogfighting fighter craft. Unlike most such battles, this took place within the atmosphere of the gas giant. The large ships were airships, and […]