Whenever most of us picture extra-terrestrial beings with the capabilities of visiting Earth from light-years away, it is assumed that all of their technology vastly exceeds that of our own. But what if only their space travel technology outdoes us and nothing else? Would that make the alien race stupid, or us stupid for not finding faster-than-light travel before such things as cell phones and machine guns?
Harry Turtledove asks this question in this spectacular short story that left me with so many questions about our own technology and evolution as humans. I found this gem in Orson Scott Card's anthology, "Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century" but you can read it online here through pastebin.com.
Music video directed by Dawn Shadforth, 1998 Performed by Garbage
This music video for the band, Garbage, is a neato watch. Lead singer, Shirley Manson, plays a queen of a "peaceful people" who must defend them from evildoers (played by the rest of the band)--by dogfighting them in WWII-styled spaceplanes! Honestly, there's not much plot to decipher here but it's a really cool video!
I first saw this video when I was a young teenager and for some reason the air combat just fascinated me--and it still does. I don't think the song has anything to do with the story involved in the video, but I think the lyrics definitely add to the intensity in the combat. Also, although the video ends with "To be continued..." I'm pretty sure it was never continued.
Of course, you can watch this video right here in ScienceFictionLand (through YouTube).
"Omega Boost" was a great PlayStation game I played a lot in middle and high school, simply because it was one of those games you could throw in and casually play over and over again. In the game, you fly around in your giant robot spaceship and shoot up other robot spaceships and, for some reason, this never gets old. But the review of this game is besides the point. Here is what I really want to bring to your attention:
THE INTRO SEQUENCE.
The intro to this game is so cheesy awesome I just had to share it. It's hard to get a full idea for the plot from just watching it, but if you had access to the manual that comes with the game you could piece together that a rogue artificial intelligence is trying to go back in time and make itself more powerful. But YOU, key-tossing, giant-robot-flying, COOL GUY, are not going to let that happen.
Enjoy the hard rock music that doesn't seem to fit the video. Fortunately some more appropriate Static-X appears in the actual game. If you would like your own copy, it's around $20 new, and a measly dollar-or-so used, on Amazon.
If you've seen Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back...OK let's be real, you've seen it. Remember that short scene with all of the bounty hunters on Vader's ship? The authors that took part in this anthology had enough from that scene to write pages on these guys. Not only do you learn where each of these villains come from, but their (mostly) futile attempts to catch Han Solo during Episode V are described as well. If you read the whole book, you get five totally different stories, only sharing the aforementioned scene from Episode V in common (and a few other encounters between each other).
I found this book at a hospital on a "free books-shelf" [AWESOME]. What's neat about this collection is you don't have to read the whole book to enjoy it. I did, of course, but each story is great by itself too. If you're not a big Star Wars fan the first "tale", IG-88's "Therefore I Am" by the editor, is an awesome sci-fi story by itself. You don't really need to know anything about the Star Wars universe to get it and it's classic homicidal robot madness. If you ARE a Star Wars fan I would recommend the second story in the anthology, "Payback", Dengar's tale. It includes a fair amount of lore on Han Solo's past as well as other locations during Episode V and was definitely my favorite in the book.
I've seen this book in most bookstores and it's not expensive. It's definitely worth a look for at your local library at least!
Well that is all for today's posts, Space Homies. I hope to bring you more next week.
