Let's Get Off This Rock Already!
Musings on space travel, science fiction, and the radiant future
Did you ever hear the tragedy of William Rutledge the astronaut? No? I thought not. It's not a story NASA would tell you. Gather round, dear readers, and listen as I tell you a tale of woe and wonder---the tale of a secret Apollo mission that made contact with aliens, on the dark side of... Continue Reading →
Hello again, all! Sorry for the unannounced hiatus, these last few months have been godawful. I'm finally back on my feet again, though, and ready to resume blogging---so here's that review of Starship Troopers I promised. Fair warning, this is one of my favorite movies. Expect some gushing. Starship Troopers was directed by Paul Verhoeven, and... Continue Reading →
This site's been on hiatus for a little while, but I'm back, and I'm kicking it off again with a review of a hidden gem of Soviet science fiction: A Dream Come True. It's an hour-long film from 1963, depicting first contact between humanity and an advanced alien race known as the Centurians. The aliens are... Continue Reading →
Here we will explore how not to write a science fiction novel. Now, I really wanted to like The Killing Star. Pellegrino and Zebrowski's novel is beloved in some sci-fi circles, and I can see why: their vision of the galaxy is a brutal place, where any civilization becomes an existential threat the moment it develops... Continue Reading →
Post by Nic Quattromani: I’ve got some tragic news to share today: NASA’s Kepler space telescope, formerly our premier planet-hunter floating in the sky, has ceased operations. This was not due to any technical failure aboard the craft. Rather, it simply ran out of fuel, rendering it unable to conduct stationkeeping or even orient itself... Continue Reading →
Post by Nic Quattromani: Tidal locking is one of the more interesting phenomena in the realm of speculative fiction, partly because it clashes with our terracentric ideas of what a planet should look like. While our comfortable, spinning Earth has two icecaps sandwiching a hot equatorial region, its tidally locked counterpart, called an “eyeball world”... Continue Reading →
Post by Nic Quattromani: I was browsing the internet today, as I do entirely too often, and I came across this gem of an article: https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2018/aug/28/the-case-against-mars-colonisation By "gem," I mean "whiny dumpster fire." Sheesh. Though perhaps I'm not being charitable enough, because the author, Zahaan Bharmal, is at least hesitantly in favor of space colonization,... Continue Reading →
