Bester's The Stars My Destination was "said by many people to be the best science fiction novel ever written," T. A. Shippey related in the Times Literary Supplement. Wendell called it "undoubtedly Bester's masterpiece, showing his `pyrotechnical' style at its best." In the opinion of Village Voice reviewer Robert Morales, "The Stars My Destination--an incredible takeoff on The Count of Monte Cristo, and James Joyce pastiche--burlesqued the adventure novel into high art. Both story and novel excel in sheer lunatic excitement."
Today, we finally get to see Jupiter Ascending, the latest (and hopefully not last) gloriously shiny sci-fi epic from The Wachowskis, the sibling directing duo behind The Matrix and the under-appreciated adaptation Cloud Atlas. Not since The Chronicles of Riddick has an outer space epic looked this unapologetically bombastic, and we couldn’t be more thrilled—if there’s one genre that […]
Today, the Ethan Hawke-starring time travel flick Predestination hits theaters. Like many time travel movies, it pays homage to the old-school Robert A. Heinlein short story “—All You Zombies,” which established many of the tropes of the genre, but in this case at least, it’s justified: it’s actually a loose adaptation of Heinlein’s award-winning tale. Without ruining too much of […]
It’s a popular cliché that science fiction is just regular fiction…IN SPACE! It certainly doesn’t help that Star Trek was pitched as “Wagon Train…IN SPACE!” and Star Wars is Akira Kurosawa’s “Hidden Fortress…IN SPACE!,” with a couple of effeminate robots thrown in for good measure. But the belief that any story can be turned into […]
What makes a science fiction story a space opera? Well, it needs to take place in space obviously, though not necessarily all of the time. Hanging out solely in an arcology on a climate-blasted Earth, or even in a domed city on Mars, doesn’t cut it. Actually, the more space the better; though there are certainly exceptions, […]