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SCIFIPEDIA:Today's Featured Article/April 2006 <span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>
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SCIFIPEDIA:Today's Featured Article/April 1, 2006
SCIFIPEDIA:Today's Featured Article/April 2, 2006
Natalie Portman, born June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel, caught the world's attention in 1994 with her unforgettable performance as assassin-wannabe Mathilda in the film "Léon" (also known as "The Professional" and ”The Cleaner"). She followed her first success with three more films released in 1995, Beautiful Girls, "Heat", and Tim Burton's sci-fi extravaganza, Mars Attacks! Then came Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, which filled theaters with ecstatic fans in 1999.
Founded in 1995, Science Fiction Weekly was the first professional online magazine devoted to SF. Focusing on reviews and news of the science fiction world, it covers books, films, television shows, games, music and other audio, anime, Web sites, and “Cool Stuff”—a catch-all for toys, collectibles, etc. The magazine also specializes in interviews, primarily with media personalities and authors. Over the years, the interviewees have included George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise
Robert Picardo as The Doctor in Star Trek: Voyager continues a great Star Trek tradition. The producers have shown an incredible knack for picking an actor who can make each "ship's doctor" an unforgettable, irascible, endearing character. From DeForest Kelley's Dr. Leonard McCoy in Star Trek through John Billingsley's Denobulan Dr. Phlox in Enterprise, the doctors have stolen the show, and this was never more true than with Robert Picardo. Voyager's doctor is neither human nor alien, but an Emergency Medical Hologram--the only source of skilled medical help after the ship's doctor and entire medical staff were killed at the beginning of the series.
Originally published in 1972, Watership Down by Richard Adams went on to win the Library Association Carnegie Medal, and become one of the most beloved fantasy novels ever written. Adams set the novel, his first, in the English countryside near where he grew up. Watership Down can be found in Hampshire, and forms a part of the Berkshire Downs. The story concerns a warren of rabbits, whose home is about to be razed to make way for a housing development. One of their number, Fiver, has a vision of the destruction to come, and persuades a few others, mostly disgruntled young males, to join him in search of a new home.
Luke Perry (Coy Luther Perry III), born in Mansfield, Ohio, on October 11, 1965, has brought his considerable success in television to roles on stage in Broadway and London, and to numerous movie roles, in both independent features and major studio productions. Perry is perhaps best known to science fiction fans as the titular star of Showtime's post-apocalyptic science fiction series, Jeremiah (2002 - 2004). Other cast members included Malcolm-Jamal Warner ("The Cosby Show") and Sean Astin ("The Lord of the Rings" movies). The show was created by J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame,
Star Trek: Voyager was the fourth series derived from Gene Roddenberry's original concept. The original Star Trek series beamed onto American television in 1966. Though short-lived, it was much loved and saw many reincarnations: as an animated series in 1973; as Star Trek: The Next Generation almost 20 years after its first bold voyages, in 1987; and as the space station-based series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in 1993. In 1995, Gene Roddenberry's legacy to science fiction rematerialized in Star Trek: Voyager. Main characters included Captain Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew; First Officer Chakotay, played by Robert Beltran; Security Officer Tuvok, played by Tim Russ; The Doctor, played by Robert Picardo; Chief Engineer B'Elanna Torres, played by Roxann Dawson; Seven of Nine, a former Borg drone, played by Jeri Ryan; Pilot Tom Paris, played by Robert Duncan McNeill; Ensign Harry Kim, played by Garrett Wang; and two representatives of races previously unseen in the Star Trek universe: Neelix, a Talaxian, played by Ethan Phillips; and Kes, an Ocampan, played by Jennifer Lien.
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, (1898) is one of the most enduring science fiction stories, and one of the earliest depictions of an invasion of our world by aliens. It was first serialized in Pearson's Magazine in the U.K. in 1897, then published in book form in 1898. It tells the story of how Martians land in the south of England in the early 1900s, arriving in capsules that crash down like meteorites. These capsules contain various Martian machines, most notably the walking tripod war machines, which shoot heat rays capable of incinerating just about anything. The Martians also employ a gas weapon known as “the black smoke,” which kills humans instantly.
They Live, written, directed, and scored by horror maven John Carpenter, premiered in 1988. Its budget was modest but it earned itself the status of cult favorite with its combination of science fiction and black humor. Carpenter sets up a future world not too different from our own, a world in the throes of a depression, complete with shantytowns warmed by oil-barrel stoves. Our Hero: Nada, a down-on-his-luck construction worker, played with panache by pro wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. Nada's looking for work but he's going to find something else entirely: a conspiracy of aliens who secretly dominate the planet, controlling the human population via subliminal messages.
John Carpenter, born in Carthage, New York, on January 16, 1948, and raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky, began his movie career by attending the University of Southern California film school in Los Angeles. While a student there, he received an Academy Award in 1970 for his short film, "The Resurrection of Bronco Billy." Carpenter's early work as a director proved commercially successful. Dark Star, in 1974, was a low-budget, outer-space comedy, on which he also shared writing credit with Dan O'Bannon. In 1976, he wrote and directed Assault on Precinct 13, an action flick that pitted cops versus a street gang. Perhaps his biggest moment of fame came with the release of Halloween in 1978, a smash hit that spawned a franchise and breathed life into the slasher film genre.
The opening credits of The Six Million Dollar Man show the main character, astronaut Steve Austin, being severely injured in a crash. One of television's most well-known introductory narrative voiceovers says, "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better . . . stronger . . . faster." The series aired from 1974 through 1978. Lee Majors starred as Colonel Steve Austin. Other important characters were Oscar Goldman, head of O.S.I., played by Richard Anderson; Dr. Rudy Wells, Austin's physician, played for a season by Alan Oppenheimer, then by Martin E. Brooks in the following seasons; and occasional love interest Jaime Sommers. Lindsay Wagner's warm-hearted portrayal of Jaime endeared her to audiences so much that she received her own spinoff series, The Bionic Woman.
Dungeons & Dragons was originally published in 1974 by the company TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) and is often referred to as the grandfather of the roleplaying game industry. D&D blends communal storytelling with traditional tabletop wargames, in a fantasy setting that owes a great deal to J. R. R. Tolkien's magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings. A group of players create characters that they bring to each gaming session. A Dungeon Master (DM) presides over play--setting up the adventure, narrating the story, determining the outcome of rules questions, and controlling the monsters and non-player-characters that the characters encounter. The characters are initially defined by their race (elf, halfling, human, and so on), and character class (paladin, rogue, priest, and so on), with their game statistics (stamina, agility, charisma, and so on) provided by dice rolls.
Laurell K. Hamilton, born February 19, 1963, in Heber Springs, Arkansas, and raised in Sims, Indiana, is a New York Times bestselling author, with two hugely popular dark fantasy series underway. Her breakout series, ”Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter”, follows a gutsy necromantic heroine who solves crimes, executes vampires and other monsters, and works a night job raising the dead, all the while juggling a very full dance card indeed. Anita's paramours include a master vampire, an alpha werewolf, were-leopards, and a chocolate-box of other sweeties. Titles in the series are…
Ranma 1/2 began as a serial manga in 1987, published in the weekly magazine Shonen Sunday through 1996. The animated television series, which started airing in 1988, ran to 161 half-hour episodes and three telefilms. It was followed by 11 OAV (Original Animated Videos) released from 1993 through 1996. One of Japan's best-known manga artists, Rumiko Takahashi was born in 1957 in Niigata, Japan. She had two successful manga titles already—Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku--when she started Ranma 1/2, a fantasy martial-arts series that also falls into the romantic comedy category. The number of important characters in the series increases over time. To start with, there is the eponymous hero/heroine Ranma Saotome, a martial artist who has fallen under a curse that causes his gender to flip male when he is doused with hot water, and female when doused with cold water…
Zenna Henderson was born Zenna Chlarson on November 1, 1917, in Tucson, Arizona, and died in 1983. She attended Arizona State University, receiving a BA in 1940 and an MA in 1954, and undertook a career in education. During World War II, she taught in a Japanese-American internment camp, marrying Richard Harry Henderson in 1943. Most of her career was spent teaching in schools throughout Arizona. Her first short story, "Come on, Wagon!," was published in 1951 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. One of a small number of women who published science fiction during the Golden Age of Science Fiction, Henderson concentrated on short stories, although some of the stories were later linked to form fix-up novels…
The Puppet Masters (1951) by Robert A. Heinlein. The fear of invasion is a bone-deep human emotion. Invaders are aliens, and they mean no good to those they usurp. Heinlein literalizes that fear in The Puppet Masters, a tale in which the alien invaders are so alien they're not even native to our planet. Their most fearsome characteristic is that they can remake anyone, no matter how well known--a friend, a lover, a parent--into a cold-hearted alien being, too. The hero is Sam Cavanaugh, a secret-service officer and one of Heinlein's trademark Competent Men. Sam's boss, the Old Man, is also his father. The Old Man assigns Sam to assist another agent, Mary, in investigating reports of a space ship landing in Iowa. Sam, Mary, and the Old Man find out that sluglike alien creatures the size of footballs are attaching themselves to people's backs. The slugs take over the humans' brains and control them in every way…
Warner Bros. released Altered States in 1980. The film was directed by Ken Russell, based on the novel of the same name by Paddy Chayefsky, which was published in 1978. Chayefsky also provided the screenplay, his last. William Hurt makes his film acting debut, as Professor Eddie Jessup, a research scientist who uses hallucinogenic drugs and a sensory deprivation tank in his experiments with altered states of consciousness. Blair Brown plays Emily Jessup, his wife, and Drew Barrymore also makes her first film appearance, in the role of their daughter, Margaret. Other major characters include Arthur Rosenberg, played by Bob Balaban, and Mason Parrish, played by Charles Haid. With his mind cut off from external reality during his immersions in the tank…
Anne McCaffrey (Anne Inez McCaffrey) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 1, 1926. She attended Radcliffe College, receiving a BA in 1947. She has three children, Alec (1952); Georgeanne (1959); and Todd (1956), with whom she has collaborated on a number of books. Her first story, published in 1953, was "Freedom of the Race," which appeared in the magazine Science Fiction Plus. Her first novel, Restoree, was published in 1967. Her fiction combines adventure, romance, and fantasy, with fast-moving plots, likeable characters, and easy-to-read prose…
 Judy Garland starred as Dorothy Gale, a Kansas farmgirl who, along with her pet dog Toto, is swept away by a tornado to the magical land of Oz…
 His first novel sale came in 1973, to Doubleday & Co. The paperback rights to Carrie, the story of traumatized high-school girl who develops telekinetic powers, brought King a degree of financial security. He followed up in 1975 with Salem's Lot, a much heftier tome, engaging one of the staples of the horror genre--vampires. King found an enormous audience for his tales of adventure and grue…
His first novel sale came in 1973, to Doubleday & Co. The paperback rights to Carrie, the story of traumatized high-school girl who develops telekinetic powers, brought King a degree of financial security. He followed up in 1975 with Salem's Lot, a much heftier tome, engaging one of the staples of the horror genre--vampires. King found an enormous audience for his tales of adventure and grue…
His first novel sale came in 1973, to Doubleday & Co. The paperback rights to Carrie, the story of traumatized high-school girl who develops telekinetic powers, brought King a degree of financial security. He followed up in 1975 with Salem's Lot, a much heftier tome, engaging one of the staples of the horror genre--vampires. King found an enormous audience for his tales of adventure and grue…
 Ashton Kutcher plays a college psychology student named Evan Treborn, who has suffered blackouts since childhood. While reading his journals, he discovers that he can temporarily return to his past and choose different actions.
 Although based on the 1898 novel by H. G. Wells, this film shares little in common with the book. Still, it is a classic in its own right. The setting is updated to contemporary (1950s) California, and substitutes a love story in place of the hero’s search for his wife. Most notably, the Martian tripod walking machines are replaced by sleek hovering craft with long necks and a kind of camera eye that shoots the signature death ray.
 Then came Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, which filled theaters with ecstatic fans in 1999.
 The magazine also specializes in interviews, primarily with media personalities and authors. Over the years, the interviewees have included George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise
The magazine also specializes in interviews, primarily with media personalities and authors. Over the years, the interviewees have included George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise
The magazine also specializes in interviews, primarily with media personalities and authors. Over the years, the interviewees have included George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise
2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.
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