Anime review: Blue Seed Beyond

(The following is a review I posted at Netflix for Blue Seed: Beyond, the sequel to the wonderful anime Blue Seed.)
The original Blue Seed is my favorite anime; it has everything I like about the form, Blue Seed Beyond, however, doesn’t live up to its predecessor. These three episodes feel more like a coda or [...]

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I don’t care if they’re evil – we must have them!

Come on, don’t act surprised. Of course someone like me, who grew up loving old science-fiction movies and Japanese anime, would feel his heart go pitter-pat at the thought of US war robots that feed on the dead:
A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself [...]

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Movie review: Target Earth

I’m a life-long fan of Fifties science-fiction films, so I was surprised when Netflix suggested Target Earth: I had never seen or even heard of it. So, I put it in my queue, didn’t really expect much, and found myself very pleasantly surprised.
Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way, first: the alien robot [...]

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Christmas loot

I have to give in to my Inner Little Kid for a moment and share what I got for Christmas. This is some neat stuff:
Books
Doris Kearns-Goodwin’s A Team of Rivals. Abe Lincoln is a deeply-felt hero to me, so I’m looking forward to reading this.
Rick Atkinson’s The Day of Battle. Part two of his Liberation [...]

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The gate closes

Sad news: SciFi Channel has canceled Stargate: Atlantis. While never as good as Stargate SG-1, it was still a very enjoyable science-fiction adventure show that had some brilliant moments. (I challenge anyone to watch either “The Storm/The Eye” two-parter or “The Siege” parts 1-3 and tell me those aren’t superb TV) It will be allowed [...]

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Why desecrate its memory?

The 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still is rightly considered a beloved classic, both of the science-fiction genre and of cinema in general. So, when I heard it was being remade, my first reaction was “In the name of God, why??” When I then read that Keanu Reeves was playing the role of [...]

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The future the way it should have been

(This is one of several posts I’m saving from my LiveJournal account, which is soon to be deleted. Originally written on October 22, 2004, it describes a future-history roleplaying campaign that I’d love to run someday. It’s based largely on my fondness for 50s science fiction movies and the future as they saw it. Enjoy.)
A [...]

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