Tag Archives: Scifi Month

Scifi Science That Became Real

This month I’m participating in the Scifi Month challenge that was created by the bloggers at One More

“Science the shit out of this” is today’s theme for Scifi Month.

Old reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation were my first introduction to technologies and scientific advancements that weren’t yet possible in our world. There were so many parts of that universe I desperately wanted to experience, from the holodecks to the replicators that would make you anything your heart desired for dinner. (It’s possible that 8-year-old me planned to eat nothing but replicated ice cream sundaes for dinner for a whole week if I ever got my hands on that technology!)

I’m still waiting for machines that are capable of these things. In the meantime, though, there are plenty of other science fiction advancements that have been or are becoming real in our world. Let’s talk about a few of them today.

Hyposprays

As someone who has been known to faint after getting a vaccination, I thought hyposprays would be less scary. Alas, my body is just as afraid of needle-less vaccines as it is of the other kind. This is still a cool development for making the workplace safer for doctors and nurses, though!

Medical Tricorders

Beverly Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation scanning Counsellor Troi with a medical tricorder.

Star Trek tricorders were used to almost instantly diagnose patients in their medical bay. With a quick scan, medical personnel could have vital scans as well as reports on anything that might be  out of order in someone’s body.

Our tricorders aren’t quite as thorough yet, but some ER docs did invent a device a couple of years ago that can give readings on lung function, blood glucose, white blood cell count, and heart function. This device can diagnose about 30 different conditions with a few quick and painless readings.

Tractor Beams

The device these physicists came up with can reel in tiny particles for distances as long as eight inches. This technology is still in its infancy, but I’m excited to see how it develops in the future.

Artificial Wombs

No, I’m not talking about incubators. As life-saving as they are, they still aren’t capable of doing everything a uterus can do.

This is something that could change in the future. A couple of years ago, scientists put a premature lamb into an artificial womb. It had a pumpless circulatory system which is much easier on the lungs of an undeveloped fetus. They even created an amniotic fluid replacement so that the lamb would be in conditions as close to a normal ewe pregnancy as possible.

The lamb seemed to develop normally, so scientists are now working on creating an artificial womb that could bring premature human babies to full term with far fewer complications than they can experience with today’s methods.

What other items can you think of to add to this list?

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Protagonists Who Knew How to Make Mischief

Scifi Month banner. Shows #ScifiMonth hashtag and two planets in background.This month I’m participating in the Scifi Month challenge that was created by the bloggers at One More. Click on the link in that last sentence for more information or to sign up yourself. There is still time to pick a few of their prompts and join in if you’re interested.

The prompt for today was “aim to misbehave.” Science fiction is filled to the brim with characters who excel at getting into trouble, so I’m narrowing it down to protagonists (or people close to them) who were mischievous in a positive, humorous way. That is, they never got into the scrapes they do with the intention of harming anyone! It was all done in good fun. 

Bender from Futurama Dancing

Bender from Futurama

Bender was high-tech industrial metalworking robot. Specifically, he was created to bend  structural steel without heating it up first.

Let’s just say that the plan for this robot’s life wasn’t necessarily all that related to who he turned out to be after he left the factory where he was assembled.

Yes, Bender was physically capable of bending just about any physical object you can imagine, but what he was really interested in was bending the rules. Often, he bent them until they broke not out of malice but because he enjoyed seeing how life played out when things don’t go according to schedule.

Humans fascinated and horrified him. He thought he hated them until he met a few special people who changed his mind. Even with his humans of choice, though, he always wanted to know just how far he could push the limits while still making his antics funny.

Luci the demon from Disenchantment lying on the floor saying "I am not a cat." He then stands up and says "Ah, whatever. I'm going to go lay down in the window."

Luci from Disenchantment

Disenchantment is one of those shows that straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy, so I’m including it in this list.  Luci is one of those demons that is far more good than he’d ever care to admit.

Like a cat, he has a strong desire for napping, independence, and not necessarily doing what the humans want him to. When push comes to shove, he’s going to land on the side of the good guys even if it means avoiding that sunbeam and not having that afternoon nap after all.

Just don’t expect him to avoid every mischievous temptation along the way. If there’s a way to get into the amusing kind of trouble while also helping his buddies, he’s going to find it.

 

Gif description: Bart Simpson shooting a water balloon with the help of a rubber launcher.

Bart Simpson

The only reasonable conclusion I can make about The Simpsons is that it’s set in a science fiction or fantasy world. How else could you explain all of the impossible things that happen in it?

Bart is one of the most mischievous characters I’ve ever met. There barely seems to be a single second of the day that passes by without him plotting his next funny trick.

 

Gif of Fred and George Weasley saying "wicked."

Fred and George Weasley

If I’d written the Harry Potter series, I would have made Fred and George the protagonists of at least one of the books! They deserved more attention than they got, and I think it would have been hilarious to see all of the hijinks these brothers got into that they maybe never got around to telling Harry about.

For example, I would have loved to see the moment when they first discovered how the Marauders Map works.

Who are your favourite mischievous protagonists or other good guys?

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Pens Over Swords: the Best Conflict Resolution in Star Trek

This month I’m participating in the Scifi Month challenge that was created by the bloggers at One More. Click on the link in that last sentence for more information or to sign up yourself. There is still time to pick a few of their prompts and join in if you’re interested.

Today’s prompt is “we come in peace.” It was inspired by #WorldHelloDay, a secular holiday that encourages everyone to resolve conflict with good communication instead of by force. As soon as I began researching this holiday, I immediately thought of Star Trek. 

I will only be including references to series in this universe that are no longer releasing new episodes, but there are mild spoilers in this post. It simply wasn’t possible to write this without them.

One of the things I’ve learned from watching various Star Trek series over the years is that a better world is possible. Conflicts can be resolved peacefully. It all starts with learning how to talk about what you want clearly and listening to what other people want, too.

Obviously, I can’t possibly cover every single moment of conflict resolution in Star Trek in this post without turning this into a full-length novel. What I’m hoping to do is highlight my picks for some of the best moments where Star Trek characters used words, whether spoken, written, or sung, to find a solution that worked best for everyone.

Beware of reading anything after this sentence that if you haven’t seen every old Star Trek episode yet and want to catch up without any hints about what is coming at all.

Avery Brooks as Captain Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Photo is of Avery smiling while wearing Star Trek uniform.

Captain Sisko’s headshot. 

Series, Season, and Episode: Emissary from Season 1, episodes 1-2 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Although, honestly, the entire Deep Space Nine series is an amazing example of how to resolve conflict, create peace, and get along with people who may have been your enemies just a short while ago.

The Conflict: Captain Benjamin Sisko, a single father and recent widower, was dismayed by the poor condition of the space station he has just arrived to command and of the disrespectful attitudes of some of his new crew. To make matters worse, the person who assigned this posting to him was the same man he blamed for the death of his wife. In these episodes he had to decide whether to stay with Starfleet or resign and find a quiet civilian life for him and his young son.

How It Was Resolved: He had deep conversations with others who helped him acknowledge his grief and see the professional challenges lying before him in a new light. I know this is kind of a vague answer, but seeing how Captain Sisko went from despondent to hopeful was incredible. This is something everyone should experience for themselves without knowing too much in advance about how it all worked out.

Tim Russ as Tuvok in Star Trek Voyager. Photo is of him suffering from pon farr. He is grimacing and his face is covered in perspiration.

Tuvok suffering from pon farr.

Series, Season, and Episode: “Body and Soul” from season 7, espisode 7 of Star Trek: Voyager.

The Conflict: Tuvok was suffering from a chemical imbalance called pon farr that was common in among Vulcans. When the medical bay’s first attempt at treatment failed, they had to resort to other ways to help Tuvok before his condition became fatal.

How It Was Resolved: Through an opera song (and then other remedies, of course).

Doctor sings Opera to Tuvok.

 

Screenshot from Star Trek: The Original series episode "The Menagerie Part 1." The Enterprise and a planet are in the background of this shot.

Series, Season, and Episode: “The Menagerie” from season 1, episodes 11 and 12 of Star Trek: The Original Series.

The Conflict: The Enterprise received a distress signal from ship that had been lost eighteen years ago. When they arrived at the planet where that ship had crash landed, several members their crew was kidnapped by the people living there.

How It Was Resolved: A trial, among other creative solutions. This episode won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1967. I don’t want to give away any other plot twists, but I will say it was quite well done.

Brent Spiner as Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He is sitting at table with his fingers laced together.

Data.

Series, Season, and Episode: “The Measure of a Man” from season 1, episode 9 of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The Conflict: A cyberneticist named Commander Maddox wished to disassemble Data in order to understand how his artificial brain functions and reverse-engineer it to produce replicas of him for Star Fleet to use. Data refused to allow this. When he attempted to leave Star Fleet in order to save himself, a court case developed to determine whether androids should be given the same rights as humans.

How It Was Resolved: A trial. There are a lot of Star Trek episodes that involve trials, now that I think about it!

Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard and John de Lancie as Q

Q and Captain Picard.

Series, Season, and Episode: “Q Who” from season 2, episode 16 of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The Conflict: There was once an omnipotent entity named Q who was so tired of seeing humans take good care of themselves that he decided to fling their spaceship 7,000 lightyears away just to see what happened next. The problem was, he threw them straight into the path of an enemy who was too powerful to defeat.

How It Was Resolved: Time travel and a large second helping of mischief. What made this episode especially great in my opinion was how much groundwork it set for future conflicts in the Star Trek universe. That’s all I’ll say about that!

If you’re a fan of Star Trek, what are your favourite scenes or episodes from it?

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My Favourite Scifi Heroines

This month I’m participating in the Scifi Month challenge that was created by the bloggers at One More. Click on the link in that last sentence for more information or to sign up yourself.

There is still time to pick a few of their prompts and join in if you’re interested.

Today’s prompt was pretty self explanatory: kickass heroines. Here are a few of my many favourite heroines from various science fiction universes.  It was tricky to keep this post to a manageable length. I could have easily written a full post about every single character on this list.

Not everything on this list has been turned into a TV show or film yet. (Here’s looking at you, Feed and Wild Seed.) Whenever possible, I provided a photo of the character in question, but there are a few book covers as well.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in the film poster for The Hunger Games. She is shooting an arrow straight ahead of her at whoever is looking at the poster.  

Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. 

Why She’s Admirable: She volunteered to take her sister’s place in The Hunger Games despite knowing that only one of the twenty four contestants will survive each year. There were many other things she did in this series that make me look up to her, but her willingness to die in her sibling’s place in the beginning of book one endeared her to me forever.

Book cover for Feed by Mira Grant. Image on it is of an Internet signal painted in blood (or red paint) on a concrete wall.

Georgia Mason from Feed by Mira Grant 

Why She’s Admirable: Going out to wander around in a world filled with zombies is the last thing I’d do in a zombiepocalypse. The fact that this character did that so regularly impressed me. Her work as a blogger only made me look up to her more.

Zoe Saldana as Nyota Uhugra from Star Trek: Into Darkness

Nyota Uhura from Star Trek and Star Trek: Into Darkness

Why She’s Admirable: While I can find something to like about nearly any character from the rebooted Star Trek universe, Uhura is the cream of the crop. She was a highly intelligent linguist. More importantly, she had common sense. This is something that every spaceship crew member needs a copious amount of in order to have any hope of survival.

Gina Torres as Zoe Washburne from Firefly. She's standing by a chair in this photo.

Zoe Washburne from Firefly 

Why She’s Admirable: Nothing stands between her and her goals in life. From fighting for freedom in a war that couldn’t be won to falling in love to making a new life for herself over and over again, Zoe knows how to get back up and try again.

Dana Scully from The X-Files 

Why She’s Admirable: She never stopped searching for scientific explanations for the bizarre things that she and her partner discovered during their many investigations. There’s something to be said for being that tenacious!

Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler book cover. Image on cover is of woman holding a glowing root.

Anyanwu from Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler

Why She’s Admirable: What’s not to admire about a demigod who used her powers to make the lives of ordinary people better? Not only that, but she did so quietly and behind the scenes without expecting any sort of reward for it. This was a very different approach to having powers than certain other characters in this universe had, and it made me appreciate how careful she was about using her abilities.

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Plot Twists I Didn’t See Coming

Scifi Month banner. Shows #ScifiMonth hashtag and two planets in background.This month I’m participating in the Scifi Month challenge that was created by the bloggers at One More. Click on the link in that last sentence for more information or to sign up yourself. There is still time to pick a few of their prompts and join in if you’re interested.

Today’s prompt was “What can possibly go wrong.” The notes for it mentioned plot twists, so that’s the approach I’m taking with this post. 

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t very good at predicting how plots would turn out when I was younger. While this is something I’ve gotten better at over time, there were still some notable moments when I didn’t figure what was going to happen ahead of time despite all of the hints the storytellers threw my way.

Let’s see if I can talk about these films without giving away spoilers. I know most of this stuff came out years ago, but I’d rather let other people discover the plot twists for themselves.

The Sixth Sense film poster. It has five numbers on it. Numbers 1 through 5 are illuminnated and named the five sense. Number 6 on the post shows the outline of a child. No sense is named there. The Sixth Sense (1999) 

The protagonist of this film was a child psychologist named Malcolm whose newest client, Haley, was struggling to open up to him.

There was something strange going on in Haley’s life, but all the boy will say about it is that he sees dead people.

It was up to Malcolm to find out what Haley means by that and why he was so reluctant to go into detail about what’s bothering him.

The foreshadowing was incredibly well done, and there were a lot of hints about what was happening with these characters. I have no idea how I missed the twist in this film the first time I watched it!

Film poster for The Others. Image shows Nicole Kidman holding a glass lamp and staring off into the corner with a fearful expression on her face. The Others (2001)

This is one of my all-time favourite ghost movies. It’s set in 1945 and follows a young mother, Grace, who was raising two special needs children on her own in a large, isolated mansion while her husband was off fighting in World War II.

The children’s health problems made it dangerous for them to be exposed to any form of natural light, so Grace had her hands full looking after them and protecting them from harm. Grace hired a few local people to help her keep the house and grounds running smoothly.

The interesting thing about her new hires was that they dressed like they lived in the late 1800s and seemed to know a lot about her home. There were strange things happening in the house that made Grace’s children wonder if it was haunted. She scoffed at that notion, but her employees had other notions about it.

Once again, this film gave plenty of hints about what was really going on in Grace’s life. I loved the ending, but I also should have seen it coming in advance.

Moon (2009)

Moon film poster. Image on it is of an astronaut wearing a spacesuit and holding his helmet. Unlike the other films in this list, this one didn’t have any paranormal themes.

Sam, the protagonist, was an astronaut who had signed up to spend three years alone mining helium-3, a new source of fuel, on the far side of the moon. He chose this isolated job in order to make money to support his pregnant wife.

A couple of weeks before his term ended, there was an accident. When Sam went out to investigate it, he found something that should have never been possible: another living human being.

That plot twist was the least surprising of them all in this film. I only wish I could discuss the rest without giving away spoilers!

While I did figure out one of the plot twists ahead of time, there were so many more that I didn’t see coming. This is the sort of film I recommend to everyone from hardcore science fiction fans to people who brand new to this genre and hesitant to give it a try. It truly had something for everyone.

What plot twists in films, books, or TV shows did you never see coming?

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Dystopian Novels Everyone Should Read

 

Over the course of the next few weeks I will be participating occassionally in the Scifi Month challenge that was created by the bloggers at One More.

Click on the link in that last sentence for more information or to sign up yourself. There is still time to pick a few of their prompts and join in if you’re interested.

Today’s prompt was Future Imperfect. That is we’re supposed to pick something related to dystopian or utopian stories. Therefore, I’ll be talking about some dystopias that everyone who enjoys science fiction should read.

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin book cover. Photo shows a mountain and some scrub brush.

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

Why everyone should read it: What could be more frightening than living in a world that was forever altered every time a specific person had a vivid dream? I don’t know about all of you, but my nightmares would be pretty scary if they came true.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell book cover. Image is of an eye peering down a hole.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Why everyone should read it: I try to avoid politics on this site, but this book’s message about totalitarianism is just as relevant now as it was when it was first published.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham book cover.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

Why everyone should read it: If you don’t fear nuclear war yet, this book might make you change your mind about it. The plot is set generations after a nuclear war. Radiation continues to kill people, though, and society’s response to it has changed all sorts of things about the ways in which people live.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood book cover. Image is of a woman's face and a flower.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Why everyone should read it: Bioengineering is fascinating. The other interesting thing about this book is how few characters it had. Nearly every human on earth had died from a plague when the events of it happened. Many of the animals and plants that humans had tweaked in some way were still alive, so it was like getting to know humanity without meeting many people at all.

The Book of Dave by Will Self book cover. Image on cover is of an etching of a car.

The Book of Dave by Will Self

Why everyone should read it: It’s set five hundred years from now and has amazing plot twists. I first read it at a time in my life when I wasn’t very happy for reasons that seemed almost impossible to fix. Reading about what the future might be like – as dark as that future was –  somehow made me feel better. This book also had some thought-provoking things to say about how we interpret old texts and why it’s so important to take the cultures they came from into context before deciding to base our lives around them.

The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper book cover. Image is of top of a building, a woman standing in profile, and a full moon.

The Gate to Women’s Country by Sheri S. Tepper

Why everyone should read it: One of the reasons why I take long breaks from the dystopian genre has to do with how poorly women are treated in most of them and how strong the assumption is that all women will have awful lives in that setting. This Feminist spin to the genre was a breathe of fresh air.

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