Sometime this Easter weekend, the Chinese space station Tiangong 1 will crash to earth, but the odds of anything hitting you are very remote. If you think you might hit those odds, buy a lottery ticket.
UPDATE: What didn’t burn up went down over the south Pacific.
The last blue moon until 2020 rises tonight.
And they’ve put Stephen Hawking to rest. His ashes will lay next to Sir Isaac Newton.
Far less seriously, we have posted some fan video from WonderCon 2018, held last weekend, below:
Today Cambridge buries the late, great Stephen Hawking. Back in 2014, they gave him a biopic, which Hawking considered “broadly true” in recounting his life. Others have been critical of liberties taken with the source material, and the depiction of specific characters.
In memory of Hawking, we’re reviewing it today.
Corey Doctorow’s 2017 novel takes place in a future we can almost touch, and follows the attempts to found a better society—and the forces that impede it. It concerns post-scarcity, climate change, ubiquitous surveillance, revolt against established oligarchies, trans- and post-humanism—and Doctorow has identified it as a kind of prequel to his debut novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.
One could even imagine these events happening a decade after Little Brother.
A busy week and a funeral kept me from posting this earlier, but, here we are, a review of Krypton‘s first episode.
It’s about Superman’s grandfather, who inhabits a dystopian version of Krypton, gets involved in a Romeo and Juliet relationship, and receives a visit from a time-traveling Adam Strange who dresses like a fifteen-year-old.
We’ve recently reviewed the first season of Westworld and many viewers await the second installment. Long before the series, however, we had this film, which became a kind of late-night classic.
The original 70s Westworld, like Battlestar Galactica, made the superior, twenty-first century series possible. it also features Star Trek‘s Majel Barett in a minor role. This actually meant she was faring better than the rest of the TOS cast at the time. Shatner was shilling for a Canadian supermarket chain, Nimoy taking largely forgotten roles, and Deforest Kelley doing guest-spots in obscure TV series and that notorious 70s stinker, Night of the Lepus.
Madeleine L’Engle’s award-winning 1962 novel introduced many young readers to SF, and began a series that remains popular.
The Walt Disney adaptation began its theatrical run last week, playing to decidedly mixed reviews.
Here’s the place to discuss it.
Season Two will be out soon, so we’re taking a look back at “The Maze,” the puzzling first season of Westworld.
The world’s best-known theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, died this morning at the age of 76. He will be remembered for his contributions to science, and his affable appearances as himself in various media.
“I’m not afraid of death,” he once said, “but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.”
Rest in Peace.
Guillermo del Toro’s SF/Fantasy/Fable inspired by an old monster movie won Best Picture and Best Director at the 2018 Academy Awards.1 Blade Runner 2049 took two, for Visual Effects and Cinematography, and Get Out, one, for best original screenplay.
Our review of the film appears here.
Full listing of winners may be found pretty much everywhere.
We dropped the regular Newspace features awhile back, but I still like the idea of wide-ranging posts on news of interest to Bureau readers, so here goes another attempt:
SciShow Space takes a look at forthcoming space missions:
While, elsewhere, we learn what led the Ariane 5 rocket off-course. I’m not saying it was aliens, but…
Okay, actually, aliens had nothing to do with it.
We have a round-up of video from around the Net, looking at science, cosplay, and Play-Doh superheroes.