mcfarland_bookreview1

Read more "See New Review from Communication Book Notes Quarterly"

Motile and intelligent plants have been the subject of science fiction for decades now. Although its more “creature feature” than sci fi, I recall as a young child in the 1970’s, watching the “Tabonga” walking-tree creature in the 1957 film, From Hell it Came. Many years later I nearly died laughing when I was reading Leonard […]

Read more "I am (probably not) Groot!"

I have to say that I think that Hulu has really hit its stride in the last year or so, first with 11/22/63 then The Path and now with the captivating re-imagining of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.  You might think that a physics and astronomy guy like me wouldn’t have much to say about this sort […]

Read more "A Hard Look at The Handmaid’s Tale"

I was recently watching this classic 50’s sci-fi/monster flick about a group of astronauts crash-landing on Earth after visiting Venus and retrieving a form of pupal-staged life.  This life form is accidentally released in Italy (it was interesting that they picked a foreign location. Usually its an American city such as Washington, D. C. that […]

Read more "20,000,000 Miles to Earth"

Have you noticed that in alien visitation films or similar television episodes the typical reaction is that people start looting (Arrival), committing acts of terrorism (Contact) or just generally acting unruly? This is often treated as “of course everyone will act that way!,” but I remain unconvinced.  For instance, in Arrival the presumed aliens don’t even […]

Read more "And The Crowd Goes Wild!"

I recently saw the Sci fi film Arrival. I won’t give away then main twists and turns of the film, though I should warn that some of what I say might still be a spoiler. The film features an intelligent alien species that’s similar to a  (possibly semi intelligent) water born species on Earth. Is […]

Read more "“Arrival”"

To answer the trivia question from “Skin in the Game”, the answer is that they all had green skin (an, in fact, two in particular were supposed to be “Orion” slaves).

Read more "It Isn’t Easy Being Green"

So, by now you’ve probably heard about the discovery of 7 new Earth-like planets around the star, TRAPPIST-1. First, what’s with the name? Usually stars either have a commonly known  Arabic name (such as Betelguese or Kochab) or Greek name that go back to at least medieval, if not ancient, times, or they have some […]

Read more "Trappist-1"

As Charles Adler discusses in his excellent book,Aliens, Wizards and Starships,  a planet residing in Earths orbit, but directly opposite from Earh on the other side of the Sun would not be possible.It turns out that such an orbit doesn’t remain stable for very long, due to the destabilizing tugs from other planets. Historically, science fiction […]

Read more "A Planet Opposite Earth?"

The science fiction characters played by Susan Oliver, Yyvone Craig (both guests for Star Trek) and Vitina Marcus (Lost in Space) had what physical trait in common?

Read more "skin in the game"