Friday, November 25, 2011

SciFi News For 11-25-11

A Tribute To Anne McCaffrey:

Don't Look Now But There's A Giant Face Behind Us. New Stills From "Prometheus":

SciFi Film "Infinite" Close To Release (Behind-the-scenes video 8:07):

Why We Like "Big Dumb Object" Science Fiction Stories:

China's "Area 51" (Multiple Images):

The Good And The Bad Options For Future American Spaceflight:

The 48th Anniversary Of The Longest-running Scifi Show Of All Time (Videos):

New Score For First SciFi Film, "A Trip To The Moon" (Video 1:00):

Irradiated Smoked Turkey And Heat-treated Yams. Happy Thanksgiving From Space:

OTHER NEWS
In the Star Trek world they refer to time quite frequently, but the latest annoucement on Trek XII's release date is anything but fiction. The sequel was originally slated for a June 29, 2012 release, but has just been bumped back to May 17, 2013, where it will take the spot vacated by Roland Emmerich's "Singularity" which moves to November 2013. The entire cast is set to return. 

Though many find the idea of remaking "Robocop" borderline sacrilege, in a recent interview director Jose Padilha said that his version of the film will focus on a very particular area that the first film glossed over: "In the first "Robocop" when Alex Murphy is shot, gunned down, then you see some hospitals and stuff and then you cut to him as "Robocop". My movie is between those two cuts. How do you make "Robocop?" 

There will be a new Q in the next James Bond film. 31-year-old British actor Ben Whishaw has been cast as James Bond's gadget man Q in director Sam Mendes' upcoming Bond flick "Skyfall" 

NASA is expecting some 13,000 people to attend the launch of its newest Mars rover on Saturday (Nov. 26). The Mars Science Laboratory or Curiosity rover, is scheduled to lift off at 10:02 a.m. EST. Following the retirement of the space shuttle fleet, NASA hopes to carry some of that interest over to its robotic planetary science missions which have traditionally drawn fewer spectators than manned launches. The state-of-the-art, one ton rover is NASA's most sophisticated Mars mission to date. Following the launch, the spacecraft will embark on an 8 1/2-month cruise to the Red Planet, with a planned arrival in August 2012. Once on the surface, the rover will study the planet's geological history, and whether it is or has ever been habitable.

The European Space Agency announced Wednesday that a ground station in Australia heard signals from Russia's marooned Phobos-Grunt Mars mission, but prospects are fading for the probe to reach the Red Planet as scheduled next year. A tracking station in Perth succeeded in contacting Phobos-Grunt, a 29,000-pound, truck-sized probe designed to retrieve samples from the largest moon of Mars and return them to Earth. Officials have been unable to contact Phobos-Grunt since a problem prevented the craft from exiting Earth orbit and accelerating toward Mars after liftoff Nov. 8.

BOOK REVIEWS
"Stark's War" - Jack Campbell:
"Reality 36" - Guy Haley
"The Time Ships" - Stephen Baxter:
"The Case For Mars - The Plan To Settle The Red Planet And Why We Must": 

SCIFI NEWS QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Never give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." - Winston Churchill 






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