Top 10 Errors in Science Fiction MoviesShare This- Published November 23, 2007 - 205 Comments

Science Fiction movies are great for expanding the mind and showing us things we may never get to see in real life. Unfortunately though, they all seem to make the same fundamental errors regarding true science. This is a list of the top 10 errors in Science Fiction movies.

10. Simplicity
This is less a crime of commission than one of omission. Space is full of wonders we cannot even begin to understand, yet most science fiction films are based in a very simplistic environment and do not even begin to investigate the wonderful possibilities that science fiction offers us. We don’t see interplanetary tunnels, aliens on planets around pulsars, creatures living on dead suns, alien life forms that inhabit the edges of supermassive black holes, or so many of the other thought provoking scenarios. Let’s spice up our science fiction movies!

9. Simplistic Planets
This is particularly evident in the Star Wars movies. Whenever a planet is introduced in a science fiction film, it has one equal ecological system across the entire planet – for example, it might be entirely covered in snow – or entirely covered in sand. If people are living on these planets, they must be providing water and other important things needed for survival. This, in turn, would suggest that the planet ought to have a well developed complex ecosystem which varies from region to region – for example ice at the poles and arid land at the center (this is just an example of course).

8. Alien / Human Breeding
This is often seen in Star Trek – for example Spock – he was half human and half Vulcan. It is not even possible for human/ape crossbreeds to occur due to genetic differences, it is inconceivable that a human and an alien might be able to crossbreed. There are, of course, additional problems: how do you perform the cross breeding if the alien does not have sexual organs or the means to extract the necessary seeds of life?

7. Alien / Human communication
If aliens did exist, it would be extremely unlikely that we could communicate with them in a very short amount of time. In addition to the regular problems in translating an entirely unknown language, we would also have to consider a society that probably involves concepts we do not understand at all. Imagine an alien race trying to understand God if they have never had a notion of religion in their society. Of course, none of this matters if the aliens communicate with their minds or non-audible means – it would be impossible for us to communicate at all with a race that has no concept of sight and sound.

6. Instant Communications
Even if we did use light particles/waves to transmit radio data, the vast distances in space would make instant radio communication impossible. A rare exception to this flaw is in the movie Contact; as the camera draws away from the earth we hear the radio emanations getting progressively older until you finally reach silence. This trick is very effectively used to show just how massive space is.

5. Humanoid Aliens
This is endemic on the various Star Trek series, where creatures from entirely different sectors of the Universe look just like Humans except for the occasional bulging ridge on their foreheads, etc. Humans evolved on earth in order to meet a very specific criteria for survival – the presumption that this is true of all other planets is ridiculous.

4. Explosions in Space
Unfortunately virtually every science fiction movie makes this error – in fact, in the vacuum of outer space, there can be no flames (as flames need oxygen) and, of course, no boom. An exception to this is the film 2001, in which Bowman re-enters the Discovery by blowing out an airlock.

3. Superluminal Travel
According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, as an object approaches the speed of light, the energy required to propel it is immense – by the time you reach the speed of light, infinite energy is needed – this renders faster-than-light travel impossible for man.

2. Earth Gravity
It doesn’t matter what film you watch, almost all of them has earth like gravity no matter where it is set. This is ridiculous, of course, unless you are on a planet, which matches earth in every way with regards to our level of gravity. One film, which does not fall for this error, is, again, 2001. The clever devices used in the film to show us how humans would live in a non-gravity environment really make this one of the best films in its genre.

1. Sound in Space
Sound requires air to travel – without air (as we find in the vacuum of space) there is no sound. Many films completely ignore this and give us ear-piercing sound effects during battles. The greatest exception to this error is, yet again, the movie 2001 – all outer space activity takes place in silence – with the occasional addition of the Blue Danube

Promising read.

WWII novel pits English warlocks against Nazi X-Men
Cory Doctorow at 6:35 AM April 13, 2010
Ian Tregellis's stellar debut novel Bitter Seeds hits shelves today. It's a beautifully written and thoroughly researched alternate WWII history, the twist being that a mad German scientist has discovered a way to endow a group of sociopaths -- raised from WWI orphans -- with X-Men-like powers that have made the Wermacht unstoppable.
To counter this, a desperate Great Britain establishes a secret division composed of a tiny number of British warlocks -- shades of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell -- men who use speech in a mystical Ur-language, accompanied by blood sacrifice, to call up vast, brutal elemental forces. These forces, the Eidolons, loathe humanity and tremble in barely restrained rage at the stain we spread on the universe, but they can be bargained with, blood traded for elemental magick.
Tregellis writes and plots beautifully. The characters -- twisted German psychics, bitter warlocks, the brutal calculators of the British intelligence apparat -- are complex, textured, surprising. The physical descriptions are wonderful. And the plot is relentless, a driving adventure story with intrigue, battle, sacrifice, and betrayal.
I had the extreme pleasure of teaching Ian Tregellis at the Clarion Workshop some years ago, and he was one of my most promising students, a standout in a year of standout writers. So I am unsurprised -- but totally delighted -- to find myself reading such a tremendous debut from him. This is the first volume of the Milkweed Triptych.

UFC's lightweight champion since January 2008, but Edgar (12-1) picked him apart with energy and movement. Although Penn and Edgar spent nearly the entire fight on their feet trading strikes, the 8-1 underdog from Toms River, N.J., even took down Penn twice, the first time Penn had been taken down in six years at lightweight.

 Edgar won all five rounds on one judge's scorecard and four rounds on another. He collapsed to his knees when the decision was announced.

Good Buzz on this...

But I wish they would feed her something.

William Gibson answers questions

Cory Doctorow at 8:48 AM Sunday

Having finished the manuscript for his next novel, Zero History, William Gibson is taking a break from fiction by answering a wide-ranging set of questions from the readers on his blog. His answers are really good and interesting. This one should be graven in marble over every beginning writer's desk.
 A "Creator's block" sounds like something afflicting a divinity, but writer's block is my default setting. Its opposite is miraculous. The process of learning to write fiction, for me, was one of learning to almost continually be doing it *through* the block, in spite of the block, the block becoming the accustomed place from which to work. Our traditional cultural models of creativity tend to involve the wrong sort of heroism, for me. "It sprang whole and perfect from my brow" as opposed to "I saw it mispelled, in mauve Krylon, on the side of a dumpster, and it haunted me". I was much encouraged, when I began to write, by Manny Farber's idea of "termite art

The gift by Erik Rinsch

Beautiful. Haunting.  Check it out.

Ohio

There's a Japanese restaurant in Thailand with robot waiters dressed like samurai. Wow.

Eight years of the shaved ape and this guy worries them?

This has to be one of the strangest looking fruits that you can buy at the supermarket. It's also one of the most useless when it comes to conventional usage — this member of the citrus family has no pulp or juices; it's all skin and pith. But while you wouldn't squeeze this one over veggies or in your afternoon tea, its rind is a complement to almost anything and can be seen on many a fancy restaurant's menu.
Buddha's Hand hails from India and parts of China. It may have gotten its name from the way it looks like human fingers, or because it's sometimes used as an offering at Buddhist temples. In parts of Asia, it's used to decorate tabletops and as a natural air freshener. Here in the US, you may have experienced it as flavored vodka.
Instructables.com has a quick and easy recipe for candied Buddha's Hand. Here are the basics:
Chop up 1 Buddha's Hand into small strips or cubes. Put them in a pot with 3 cups of water and 3 cups of sugar, and bring to a boil on medium heat. Once it boils, simmer for 45 minutes. Once it becomes candied and syrupy, turn off the heat and let it cool for about a half hour.

I should mention that this fruit is not in season right now; you might be able to find it at the supermarket now, but you'll likely have to wait until fall, which is when it's most ready to eat

cool coop

Frederik Roijé designed this stately and elegant "architectural hen house to breed and retreat." Breed Retreat (Thanks, Greg Long!)

Good Fun. Iron Man 2

anything by ridley is good to go......

First look at Ridley Scott's FOREVER WAR

"Is this real?" Is no doubt the question going through all your minds right now. I get the skepticism and to answer the question I can only say that this piece of concept art comes to us from long-time movie illustrator Steve Simmons who has done art for a ton of movies including the upcoming Timeless and the Neil Marshall produced horror flick The Ghosts of Slaughterford.
I've put in some inquiries to see if this is indeed the first legit piece of concept art for Ridley Scott's in-development adaptation of the "Forever War" novel. The way I see it, if I get a C&D order it definitely is. If no one cares then it's probably not. Either way I'll let you know what I find out.
Forever War Synopsis:An elite task force returns home after a brief interstellar military operation, but discovers that 20 years have past and the planet they once knew is completely different. Based on Joe Haldeman's 1974 novel "The Forever War". Based on Joe Haldeman's 1974 novel "The Forever War".
Take a gander at the full sized peice of art after the break.

* Dr. Ephraim McDowell removed a 22 lb. ovarian tumor at the time physicians beliebed injections of castile soap were the appropriate treatment for ovarian cancer.

wwjd

Nine members of a Christian militia group known as Hutaree (website Google cache) were today indicted on multiple charges involving an alleged plot to attack police, including seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, announced the U.S. Attorney in Michigan. Reports: New York Times, Talking Points Memo. No coincidence they're in Michigan, it would seem: the group reportedly planned attacks on Muslims in Detroit and elsewhere. The state is home to some of America's largest and most densely populated Muslim communities.

"I wonder if these fundamentalist extremist terrorists will be waterboarded and held without trial indefinitely," quipped a friend of a friend.

Above, while it lasts, what is purported to be a Hutaree-produced video grabbed from hutaree.com. The video features guys in camo traipsing through the forest, over a Sisters of Mercy track (Christian militias are into goth? Okay.)
 The website makes much reference to a "Christian Republic," "end time battles," and the voices of "Christian martyrs," "Jesus warriors," and talk of "Jesus and the ten virgins." If you translated this website into Arabic, you'd have the sort of stuff that's presented to America as the reason we're in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 While the homepage is inaccessible, some portions of the site are accessible at the publish time of this blog post, including details about a training camp planned for April 24, and their rank taxonomy. The top guys in the organization are known as RADOK [RD], BORAMANDER [BM], ZULIF [ZL], and ARKON [AK], and the lowest guys are "gunners." The Hutaree doctine is spelled out here. From the "About us" page:
Christ is our king of kings and top general of all things, for we are not of this world but we live in it. The Hutaree will one day see its enemy and meet him on the battlefield if so God wills it. We will reach out to those who are yet blind in the last days of the kingdoms of men and bring them to life in Christ. (...) Oh and don't forget that you can write us through the contact us link on the Hutaree homepage. Once again thanks for visiting Hutaree.com and may Christ bless you widely

Good buzz on this

Year: 2009

Directors: Ivan Engler / Ralph Etter

Writers: Ivan Engler / Patrick Steinmann / Thilo röscheisen
IMDB: linkTrailer: link Review by: agentorange

Rating: 8.2 out of 10
[Editor's note: Cargo is having its North American premier at SXSX 2010 tomorrow night. Be there, or be square.]
Those of you worried that Cargo will turn out to be just another Alien clone are going to be happy by the end of this review. Because, despite what the marketing for the film may have us believe, Cargo is not the typical space-station horror you might be expecting. It is a much grander work than that, blending classic scifi ideas about the destiny of humanity with massive visual scope and confident direction from first-time feature directors Ivan Engler and Ralph Etter. In short, Switzerland has not only produced its first large scale science fiction film, but one that showcases enough smarts and skill that

Burning down the house...

How Thomas Edison set W. H. Vanderbilt's house on fire

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 1:52 PM Thursday
This anecdote, taken from Edison's autobiographical notes, may well be one of the most awkward moments in the history of public relations.

So, William Henry Vanderbilt was an early investor in Thomas Edison's electric lighting endeavors, and it wasn't terribly surprising that Vanderbilt wanted to be one of the first kids on the block, so to speak, to get the new lights installed at his own house. This was prior to 1882—and the opening of the first centralized power plant—so the lights were run by an on-site generator installed in the basement. Sadly, the first demonstration of Vanderbilts' lighting system went a bit awry.
About 8 o'clock in the evening we lit it up and it was very good. Mr. Vanderbilt, his wife and some of his daughters cam in and were there a few minutes when a fire occurred. The large picture gallery was lined with silk cloth interwoven with fine metallic tinsel. In some manner, two wires had got crossed with the tinsel, which became red-hot and the whole wall was soon afire ... [the fire is put out] ... Mrs. Vanderbilt became hysterical and wanted to know where it came from. We told her we had the plant in the cellar, and when she learned we had a boiler there, she said she would not occupy the house; she would not live over a boiler. We had to take the whole installation out.
Lessons learned: Better insulation on your electrical wiring = good. Tinsel in your wallpaper = bad. Mrs. Vanderbilt = totally freaked out by the wrong

Steam Punk

Steampunk Star Wars costumes


Cory Doctorow at 11:56 PM Tuesday

Outland Armour -- a replica armour company -- produced a set of steampunk Star Wars costumes that include this wonderful Steampunk Boba Fett and Princess Leia.

Viva!, the French

French TV show uses famous Milgram torture experiment

Mark Frauenfelder at 2:36 PM Monday

Bob Harris pointed me to this BBC story about Stanley Milgram's famous torture experiment, repeated on French TV and contextualized as a reality game show.
Egged on by a glamorous presenter, cries of "punishment" from a studio audience and dramatic music, the overwhelming majority of the participants obeyed orders to continue delivering the shocks - despite the man's screams of agony and pleas for them to stop. Eventually he fell silent, presumably because he had died or lost consciousness. The contestants didn't know that the man, strapped in a chair inside a cubicle so they couldn't see him, was really an actor. There were no shocks and it was all an experiment to see how far they would go.
Only 16 of the 80 participants stopped before the ultimate, potentially lethal shock

Fantastic books/ Movie?

SXSW 2010: Review of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Posted on Saturday, March 13th, 2010 1:44:04 GMT by: rochefort
Posted under: movie review thriller Swedish cyber
Year: 2009
Directors: Niels Arden Oplev
Writers: Nikolaj Arcel / Rasmus Heisterberg / Stieg Larsson
Review by: rochefort
Rating: 8 out of 10

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", Niels Arden Oplev's adaptation of the first book of Stieg Larsson's "Millenium Trilogy", is a crackin' thriller in which Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), a recently disgraced journalist, and Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a lesbian hacker with a history of violent mental episodes, are hired by the patriarch of the rich and elusive Vanger clan. Uncle Vanger wants them to find out what happened to Harriet Vanger, his niece and favorite relative who disappeared from the family's island some forty years prior. In the course of their investigation they discover a labyrinthine conspiracy involving government cover-ups, a series of unsolved murders, brutal rape and Nazis.

Already a major hit in its native Sweden and across Europe ("The Girl Who Played with Fire", the second film, has already been released overseas), this first film is essentially a tight little mystery thriller with a dark-as-pitch underbelly and top-shelf production values. At first glance it may, at least to American audiences, resemble little more than a well-done mystery akin to the sorts of whodunits Hollywood has been putting out consistently since before World War II; there's a dash of Hitchcock here, a bit of "The Silence of the Lambs" there. But the sum of its parts is still both compelling and distinctly European, and results in a tale that takes its time, establishing both its characters and the plot with a welcome and refreshing level of patience and restraint. It's probably also worth noting that the overseas reception to this film (and the resulting hype), may perplex some U.S. audiences who can appreciate its surface virtues but not really relate to some of the core political undercurrents. Apparently this is one of the first films of its kind to inflect a pulpy noir with references to Swedish/Nazi collaborators and secret societies. But if you dig a well-executed, adult suspense thriller, this movie plays like a master's guide on how it's done.

Blomkvist and Salander spend the entire first act in separate worlds, their stories smoothly converging in a manner that feels neither contrived nor hackneyed. Blomkvist is an idealist, the publisher of Millenium, the magazine after which the literary trilogy is named. Less a square-jawed hero than a slightly-clumsy bookworm, Blomkvist dared to try and expose a major corporation as corrupt but got in over his head, and has only a few weeks to solve Vanger's case before he's sent to prison for libel. Salander is a freelance investigator and hacker who tracks down dirt on people of interest for whomever pays the most, and Blomkvist is her most recent target. She's also been bouncing around from one sponsor to the next, as she's on probation for a number of violent altercations, and the most recent sponsor is a real scumbag who threatens to ruin her run of good behavior unless she submits to his harsh sexual fantasies. A key scene involves one of the roughest rapes I've seen committed to celluloid, but what happens after is not only oddly empowering, but also shines further light on an increasingly complex character.

The secret weapon here is, of course, Salander, easily one of the most fascinating characters to emerge in recent cinema, and Rapace's portrayal is pitch perfect. A tattoo-covered, Mac-using, motorcycle-riding Tank Girl by way of Neo (with a little bit of wounded Jodie Foster thrown in), every moment Salander is onscreen the movie just pumps. She's neither a tragic victim nor an excessively brooding shoegazer, and Rapace sells her untraditional sexual psychology, as well as her proficiency with computers and the clues of the case, with alternating degrees of subtlety and intensity. She almost seems like the sort of character we're more likely to see in some cyberpunk action film, but in "Girl" feels entirely real. Salander isn't interested in our sympathy, but earns it anyway, and by film's end we're rooting for her despite the fact that she's still a little scary. Nyqvist plays Blomkvist like he knows exactly who wears the pants in their weird partnership, and his interest in her (both romantic and intellectual) is tempered with a kind of "aw shucks" awe. Together they make one of the best screen pairings in recent memory.

While the pacing may not be everybody's cup of tea (this is less a sensationalist action-thriller than a creepy procedural), "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is still an easy one to recommend thanks to its characters and atmosphere. There's just something hard to resist about a punk Sherlock Holmes, you know? This one should get a stateside limited release sometime this year, and the word is that a U.S. remake is in development, but unless you just can't handle dubbing or subtitles, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Cutting edge Brazilian sci fi

Posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 16:24:46 GMT by: quietearth

Posted under: trailer news short scifi foreign brazil
The second short film from EBBËTO is currently playing the fest circuit, and at 25 minutes in length and the looks of this trailer, my jaw almost dropped. I want to see the whole thing now. Seriously, check it out folks.
The film tells the tale of a machine travelling in deep-space which has as a primary function the preservation of a living organism: a man. Strange events with biblical analogies begin, disturbing the machine and making it rethink it's priorities.