The 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the U.S. is rapidly approaching and there is no shortage of reminiscing about the events of that day. We all have stories to tell. Since this is a place that talks about science fiction, have you wondered what effect that day had on the genre? If you think it had none, then you'd be wrong. As many will tell you, science fiction is not about the future, but merely tells stories about today, but wraps them in the genre's tropes.  Since 9/11 and terrorism are from our time, they figure in plenty of science fiction stories, shows and movies. IO9 does a good job of summarizing the many examples of science fiction that is informed by that dark day. Have you noticed the rise of superhero movies since 9/11? It's no coincidence, as many have written, including the aforementioned IO9, but not quite as thoroughly as you'll find in this piece. While there are many allegorical takes on 9/11 in the movies or on television, few have actually portrayed the events of that day. Graphic novels have been less cautious on the subject as this list shows. In memory of 9/11, Den of Geek recently compiled a list of its 10 greatest sci-fi conspiracy movies. What I'm surprised at is no one mentioning, apart from the 9/11 conspiracy folks,  the pilot episode of The X-Files spinoff, The Lone Gunman. Six months before 9/11, the show featured a story of an attack on the World Trade Center with an airplane. The truth is out there!

What would you give to be able to never grow old? Be careful what you wish for, it might come true. In Drew Magary’s first novel, The Postmortal, he wonders what the world would be like if someone discovered a cure for aging. It sounds like it would be a great thing, but as the story unfolds, the reader quickly discovers it would be a nightmare. In the opening chapter, we meet our hero, John Farell, a lawyer who is paying a black-market doctor to have three simple injections which will keep his body from aging. He won’t be immortal, but as long as he doesn’t contract a fatal disease or get hit by a bus, he could potentially live hundreds or thousands of years. Eventually, the cure becomes legal, cheap and widely available. In no time, just about everybody is “postmortal.” The time and setting of the book is America of the near-future. As Farell ages, the book advances by decades and society gets progressively worse as a result of the cure. When a scientist discovers a sort of vaccine that prevents cancer and other deadly diseases, the world starts to go off the rails. The Postmortal is essentially a pre-apocalypse novel. The biggest problem the world faces with postmortals is the fact that most people get the cure when they are young and remain reproductively viable for much longer than normal. In other words, people can have as many babies as they want and it’s not unusual for someone to be married multiple times and raise multiple families. As for marriage, it seems that “until death do us part” is no longer part of the lexicon and people aren’t keen to spend a real eternity with someone else. The result is that divorce skyrockets and relationships are more dysfunctional in this future world. In many ways, The Postmortals is a story about the effects of overpopulation on the world and how it would lead to competition for resources that would ultimately lead to a breakdown of society. It might already be happening on Earth, but it’s happening over generations so we, as individuals, don’t notice it, but postmortals have the misfortune of living long enough to witness the decline. The hero of the Postmortal is not the most lovable character. He is a lawyer, which has negative connotations for many, but his career switch as an “End Specialist” makes him even less appealing. It seems that many people don’t want to live forever, so they call End Specialists to terminate their lives. Each person seems to have a unique request on how to do it along with different reasons why they want to die. At first Farell doesn’t pull the trigger on those who want to end it all. He’s there to act as a sort of official witness who interviews the clients and takes note of their final wishes. Eventually, the End Specialists have to carry out forced terminations where the government targets specific people to be killed. Farell is no longer just a witness, but now an executioner. He is conflicted about this turn of events and has to decide whether or not he should continue. The Postmortal is written in a first-person style and is formatted as a series of what appear to be electronic blog posts or journal entries. It’s a gimmick for the web generation, which I don’t think it’s entirely necessary. It doesn’t add or subtract to the story other than it indicates the passage of time. Magary has written a riveting book that will both fascinate and scare you and maybe make you glad that you will die some day before the world becomes an even worse place to live. Disclosure: An electronic review copy of the book was provided by Penguin USA.

If you're like me, you've probably read a ton of stories that feature interstellar travel. Some of them may have actually included plausible science to explain how the heroes of the story travelled between the stars. If you can convince DARPA that some of those ideas are possible, you just may be able to make yourself half a million dollars. DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects) and NASA have teamed up to offer a $500,000 grant to an organization that wants to study the feasability of interstellar travel. Sounds like a cushy gig. It's the culmination of the 100-Year-Starship study which launched last year at a related symposium at about this time of year. The symposium is actually going to return again this year and the organization solicited ideas for presentations over the summer. Even if NASA and DARPA never get around to figuring out how to get us to the stars, private industry is aiming in that direction. SpaceX, a for-profit space company, is working on replacements for the American shutle program, but the firm's founder says his ultimate goal is to make man an interstellar species. How's that for a company mission statement! It certainly would be cool to see the day that man journeyed to another star, but I'd be just as happy to live long enough to see someone visit Mars, but have a sinking feeling I'll be six-feet under by the time that happens. Meanwhile, DARPA is not only dreaming of space rockets, but is building all sorts of technologies that you prove the agency's employees are hardcore science fiction fans.

In recent years, I've been trying to read the nominees for the best novel Hugo, but this year I found myself mired in one book, or make that two books, Connie Willis' Blackout/All Clear. I started with that book first since I pretty much predicted it would win once I read the list of nominees and didn't think I'd be able to read all of the books in time. As predicted, it won the best novel award this weekend. What's sad is that the Hugos are becoming so predictable that they aren't necessarily a measurement of quality that they once were, but are becoming a popularity contest. Willis has name-recognition that many of the other nominees lacked and Blackout/All Clear has received enough notice even in mainstream press that it I figured they'd win because of those factors. I haven't read the other nominees, so I can't tell you whether or not Willis is the deserving winner, but I can say that I was profounly disappointed by these books. I count Fire Watch, a related novella, and The Doomsday Book, another time-travel book among my favourites, but this book (it's really one story split into two volumes) does not live up to those. For one, it is overly long. I believe the story could have been told in half the telling. It is padded with a variety of scenes that may tell us that Willis has done her homework about World War II England, but doesn't really advance the story as much as they could. For those not familiar with the tale, it tells the story of a group of Oxford University historians from the future who travel back in time to World War II England. One is there to learn about the Dunkirk evacuation, another about the Blitz and a third about children who are evacuated to the north of the country. As their assignments drag on, each discovers that they are unable to return back to Oxford of the future because their time portals won't open. Aware of each other, they begin to seek each other out in the hopes of using the others' time portals. It slowly dawns on them that none of them work and they are all trapped in time, not knowing if they will ever escape. Much of the book deals with their daily lives during the war and exposes the reader to life during that time. Interesting, but there is just too much detail and too many scenes. At one point, it feels more like you are reading a historical novel than a time-travel story. I will admit that the story is compelling and the characters are sympathetic, believable and well drawn, but at one point, I found myself wanting to skip ahead to what I figured would be their ultimate escape from their predicament. Of course the paradox with time travel stories is that the future you will know that you were stuck in time and know your exact whereabouts and can go and rescue you at any time so there's really no need to be stuck in the past. Willis tries to explain that away, but didn't convince me. One of the preoccupations of the stranded time travellers is that they have somehow affected the outcome of the war which prevented their future selves from never materializing. I wondered why all of these time travellers were so focused on England. Weren't there German time travellers from the future going back to see how the Nazis did things? Maybe they would somehow affect the war's outcome. If you are a fan of time travel stories or Connie Willis, then you probably should give Blackout/All Clear a try. Otherwise, I'd only recommend it if you like overly long books.

Are paper books worth saving? Now that electronic books are becoming an unstoppable force, it's a question worth asking. We're no longer reading papyrus scrolls so why isn't it unrealistic to think that paper books may become just as extinct? Ink on paper is just a medium. One that's been around for centuries, but there is a long history of media that have died off. This columnist argues that paper books are not worth fighting for. She argues that electronic books are not killing the publishing industry and may end up being its salvation and lists some reasons why. What she fails to discuss is the elephant in the room over book piracy. Pirating books was once a difficult task, but new technologies have made it a breeze and pirated editions are so common that they are poised to completely devalue all books. Unlike the music industry where musicians can at least make a living from concerts, authors don't have such an option. Some publishers are experimenting with different subscription models, such as science fiction imprint Angry Robot which is offering readers an annual subscription which gives them access to every title published in a year. It's an intriguing idea, but it will ultimately be hard to compete with free. It makes you wonder why anyone would ever want to be a writer. As this essayist points out, it's not good for you.

I am relieved to see that the new Planet of the Apes movie is good, at least the critics think so. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, it gets a healthy 80% score. One review called it the best blockbuster of the summer. Not only critics liked the movie, but audiences did as well as its haul at the box office is better than expected, but it's probably taking advantage of some very weak competition in theatres. I said I was glad that it was good, because I feared after the disasterous 2001 "re-imagining" of POTA, that it would spell the end of one of science fiction's greatest, and most underappreciated, franchises. With the success of this film, we'll probably get to see more apes, although it remains to be seen whether subsequent movies maintain the level of quality that we would hope for. The stars of the film have been making the rounds to promote the movie. John Lithgow confessed that he's never watched any of the apes movies from start to finish, but was so moved by the script of this film that he had to do it. Andy Serkis is the motion capture star of the film who plays the role of Caesar, the intelligent ape. Serkis seems to be Hollywood's go-to guy for motion-capture roles. At least he doesn't have to worry about being recognized in the street or stalked by papparazzi. As for James Franco, he's just interested in acting in as many different roles as possible. He reminds me of a young Jack Nicholson.

There was news recently about an asteroid that shared is orbit around the sun with the Earth, but some think that at one time our planet shared its orbit with something even larger - another planet. There is a possibility that the collision with Earth that formed the moon was with a Mars-sized planet which went around the sun with us. Wouldn't it be cool if it was still there? The idea of there being other planets in our solar system that remain undetected has always been tantalizing. One group of astronomers is convinced that there's another big planet waiting for us out in the Oort cloud, although others dismiss the idea as fantasy. When we're not thinking about other worlds, scientists like to imagine how our world could be different if certain factors were changed during its creation. Ever wonder what Earth would be like if it didn't spin? The lack of centrifugal force would create a very different displacement of the world's oceans.

Cowboys and aliens? Together? In the same movie? It's not as strange as it sounds. Blending westerns with science fictional elements is not new. Remember Westworld, with Yul Brunner as the out-of-control robot gunslinger? Or Valley of the Gwangi where cowboys battled stop-motion dinosaurs?  The Wild Wild West probably qualifies too as a sort of proto-steampunk. Cowboys & Aliens is just the latest installment of the genre crossover. Unfortunately, this one isn't so great. At least that's the critical consensus over at Rotten Tomatoes where it gets a so-so score. What's interesting about the movie is that it seems to be part of a trend for this year's summer genre movies to be set in the past where audiences seem to be happy to make nostalgic visits.

The Guardian has an ongoing series called The Question which asks various questions about spirituality and poses them to experts who attempt to answer them. For some reason, science fiction seems to figure prominently in these discussions. What can science fiction teach us about God? I'm glad you asked, because here's are links to three essays that answer that question, including one from author Ken MacLeod. Gwyneth Jones also has a go at answering the question as does Francis Spufford. There are lots of thought-provoking ideas in those essays. In the end, though, it is a question that truly has no answer. Turning from the idea of God to the concept of religion for a moment, one of the things that is common to most belief systems is a book of knowledge aimed to guide the actions of a faith's believers. One story in the Old Testement is that of the tablets of the 10 Commandments being given to Moses. Something like that is playing out today in, of all places, Georgia where some unknown benefactor has created a massive, Stonehenge-like structure which is covered with directives for future society to follow in the event of an apocalypse. Want a story idea? How about imagining a world centuries from know that has arisen from ours on which their religion is based on the words on those stones?

The Guardian has an ongoing series called The Question which asks various questions about spirituality and poses them to experts who attempt to answer them. For some reason, science fiction seems to figure prominently in these discussions. What can science fiction teach us about God? I'm glad you asked, because here's are links to three essays that answer that question, including one from author Ken MacLeod. Gwyneth Jones also has a go at answering the question as does Francis Spufford. There are lots of thought-provoking ideas in those essays. In the end, though, it is a question that truly has no answer. Turning from the idea of God to the concept of religion for a moment, one of the things that is common to most belief systems is a book of knowledge aimed to guide the actions of a faith's believers. One story in the Old Testement is that of the tablets of the 10 Commandments being given to Moses. Something like that is playing out today in, of all places, Georgia where some unknown benefactor has created a massive, Stonehenge-like structure which is covered with directives for future society to follow in the event of an apocalypse. Want a story idea? How about imagining a world centuries from know that has arisen from ours on which their religion is based on the words on those stones?

A new science fiction movie has rolled into theatres which looks like it might be worth a look. By all accounts, it's an intelligent sci-fi film without the usual alien invasion accompanied by explosions. The film is Another Earth and tells the story of the discovery of a duplicate Earth which suddenly makes an appearance in our solar system. It is seemingly identical in every way, everyone is a doppleganger for someone on our Earth. The reviews over on Rotten Tomatoes seem to be mixed, although they trend toward the positive, especially among the "star" critics and not the rest of the hack pack. The scores on MetaCritic are similarily positive. Here's an interview with the creators of the film to give you some background about it. A duplicate Earth is not a new science fiction idea. If you haven't seen it, Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, a British movie which goes by the title Doppleganger in Europe, is a movie worth tracking down. It is about an astronaut who thinks he's returned to Earth, but has accidentally landed on a parallel Earth which is constantly hidden from us because it lies on the direct opposite side of the sun. Here's the trailer for Another Earth: and for fun, here's the trailer for Doppleganger:

I'm always on the lookout for good science fiction movies to watch with my kids as part of my sly brainwashing campaign to transform them into life-long fans. Recently, I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind with my oldest. I had not seen the movie since I watched it a drive-in theatre during its original run in the 70s. I was only a bit older than my son is now and wondered if it would hold up and how my son would react to a movie that was nearly three decades old. What I did notice is that the movie develops very slowly, something that today's generation has a hard time understanding. Despite the slow start, the climax of the film still delivers and my son proclaimed it to be a great movie. I found that it has aged very well and almost has a timeless quality to it. John Scalzi recently blogged about an experience with his daughter and him watching some schlocky sci-fi on TV and found her to be quite critical of old films. I hope he continues to encourage her to watch that kind of thing because I think it's important to know the history of movies in order to appreciate today's offerings. The A.V. Club examines some older sci-fi films that were aimed at kids and took a closer look at them from the hindsight of a grownup. The titles they chose haven't aged very well. Something that I am thinking of exposing my kids to is Mystery Science Theater 3000. I think that the combination of old movies and snarky commentary is something that they will take to naturally because making sarcastic comments about old stuff is something they do naturally.

Philip K. Dick hasn't always been a hit in Hollywood. Blade Runner was originally a flop, his daughter recalls, and over time its cult grew to the point where PKD is a hot ticket with producers looking for stories to drive their movies. For the most part, those movies have been science fiction, but Dick's stories weren't all paranoid thrillers. One of his stories is being translated into film by none other than Disney. It's King of the Elves, more of a fantasy than a sci-fi story. More interesting to Dick fans is the movie Radio Free Albemuth, a movie where the main character is Dick himself. The story is from the period late in his life where he believed that an alien intelligence orbiting the Earth was transmitting messages into his brain. Crazy, yes, but the result was he wrote some fascinating books based on those experiences. I wonder if Dick's star will always burn bright with Hollywood or if some other dead science fiction author will assume the role of IT guy in the future.

Science fiction and sex are not two things that are commonly linked to each other, but over the years there have been plenty of examples of sci-fi pornography. I09 has helpfully provided some samples for you to consider. Titillation aside, science fiction has been linked with making people more open to strange sex and sexuality, or at least that's what this writer believes. I wonder if enjoying strange sex actually makes you more open to science fiction? Never mind the kinky stuff with aliens. What about having a relationship with a robot? Can robots fall in love? Not to label gay sex as strange, but it's certainly a minority orientation so it's not typicallly found in science fiction stories. For example, you don't see it in the Star Trek universe, despite George Takei's presence. One of the show's producers, Brannon Braga, explains that it wasn't their best decision.

Why are sci-fi movies so stupid when you compare them to science fiction books? Presumably it is so they will appeal to the lowest common denominator, but this Australian pundit looks at all of the sci-fi movies released between Transformers 2 and 3 and classified which he considered stupid and which he thought were smart for being based on intelligent ideas. His score was 14 smart films and 6 stupid, although your idea of smart vs. stupid may be different than his. I scored it the reverse with only 6 of them being intelligent and the rest being stupid, although I may also be confusing that with box office success because I can't say that I've actually watched all of the movies on the list. Sometimes we like to look back at earlier movie eras, thinking that the quality of films made then were of a higher quality than today. This writer identifies 1951 as a good year for sci-fi movies, although he uses a sample of a mere three movies to make that claim. He might have made a better case if he had at least named The Day the Earth Stood Still, probably the best genre movie from that year. All things considered, not many sci-fi movies were released that year, but it did have some duds, such as Flying Disc Men from Mars, Flight to Mars and don't forget Superman and the Mole Men. Perhaps 1951 wasn't so great after all. And speaking of movies, a New York charity aimed to screen all of the Star Wars at a bar as part of a charity recently, but George Lucas, who is clearly a Sith Lord, shut it down because they were charging admission, although it was supposedly to cover the cost of booze. What a nice guy.

I'm excited by the news that The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction will be reborn as a website later this year. Even more exciting is that it will be free. I own all of the previous editions of the book, the first edition edited mainly by Peter Nicholls, the second where Nicholls was aided by John Clute, the illustrated version and even the CD-ROM edition. According to the press release, the new edition will be even bigger and there are a raft of other editors onboard, including the ever-popular David Langford. I can't wait. While things like Wikipedia are great for finding sci-fi facts online, the SFE, as they've chosen to acronymize it instead of ESF, is written with a consistent tone and exhibits a deep knowledge of the subject that you don't get elsewhere. There is a companion book, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, which is almost as good. I wonder if it will ever get the electronic treatment. It would probably do even better seeing how popular Print fans seem disappointed that there are no immediate plans for an analog publication, but in their Twitter feed, Clute seems to be trying to gauge how much real interest there is. He's also floating some ideas about paid apps and such as a way to generate some actual money from the project. The future certainly looks tough for publishers as ebooks seems poised to erode what little profit they and bookstores are making. All you have to do is look at the torrent websites and you see files with thousands of books that can be downoaded in minutes. There are more books in those files than most people can read in a lifetime. It's going to be awfully hard to compete against free, just as the music industry.

Writing science fiction stories which star dead science fiction authors just might be the next big thing. The Astounding, the Amazing and the Unknown is such a book and the alternate-history tale is getting a lot of attention judging from reviews like this one or this one. You can even read an excerpt online at IO9. It stars Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp. The author of the book, Paul Melmont, isn't new to the idea. He's written another book with an author in it called Jack London in Paradise. He's also certainly familiar with the pulp era as he has penned some stories for several Doc Savage comic books as well as a novel called The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril. Proof that this is a bona-fide trend can be found in The Map of Time, a book which features a cast of historical characters, but features none other than H.G. Wells as its main protagonist. And seeing that it is July the 4th, ever wonder if there is a connection between Wells, the British author, and American Independence Day? This writer has found one. Back to our topic of real sci-fi figures in fictional settings, one of my favourites of the genre is actually a television episode, Far Beyond the Stars, an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In this episode, the characters of the show are portrayed as writers, editors and artists for 50s era science fiction pulp magazine. It's a classic.

With the Keppler space telescope finding new exoplanets all of the time, SETI researchers are starting to rethink how they look for alien intelligence. Instead of pointing their radio telescopes to the sky in the hopes of finding something, they figure it makes more sense to target those stars that actually have Earth-like planets that Keppler has revealed. Makes sense to me. Instead of looking off-planet for intelligent aliens, how about doing the same here on Earth? Some scientists are working on ways to communicate with dolphins, a species long thought to be highly intelligent. Wasn't that a movie with George C. Scott? How about that other intelligent species that we made extinct? The Neanderthals. Might it be possible to clone them and bring them back to existence? If we could figure out how, the bigger question is should we? Maybe the dolphins don't end up being intelligent and the Neanderthal cloning doesn't pan out. There are always robots. One Google researcher figures a good way to make them cheaper and smarter is not to power them with onboard computers, but instead use cloud computers as the source of their thinking. Clever.  

My ears are always open for the buzz on the latest, greatest science fiction books and the one that seems to be getting a lot of attention these days is Robopocalypse by Daniel Wilson. Reviews have been favourable, although most consider it to be a fun read and not exactly what literary types would label a "good" book. It doesn't hurt that Steven Spielberg has optioned it's film rights and plans to make it his next movie project. Never mind the Oprah effect, linking Spielberg's name to a book has got to be good for sales. Another book that's caught my attention is Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief. One review on a Wall Street Journal blog (of all places) likens it to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The comparison is not to the contents of the two books, but in their influence on the genre going forward. That's a pretty bold statement which makes me want to read it, although I've got to work my way through the Hugo novel nominees first. If only they'd stop making books bigger, I could get my reading done! If new books are outside of your budget, check out the comments elicited on NPR's website when they asked their listeners to list their five favourite sci-fi books. There are lots of great suggestions there for you to seek out at your local used book store, or at least download for your ebook reader.

My kids have started their summer vacation so I'm going to take some time off from blogging for a while. Not quite sure when I'll be back online, but it shouldn't be too long. My blogging frequency has dropped over the past few months, mostly because I've been following my beloved Boston Bruins through the NHL playoffs. I'd rather be watching (or playing) hockey than sitting on my computer. It's got me thinking about the future of The Website at the End of the Universe. It does take time and effort to keep it alive and there have been days where it has felt like a chore. That's not a good thing. I've got some changes in mind for coming months that I hope will incorporate more elements of the social web and make it easier for me to keep updating the site. Now get off of your computer and get outside! That includes you Chinese spammers who continue to futilely post comments and messages that go directly to the digital trash heap.