Holy crap! Alligator clips are called "crocodile clips" now? When did that happen. Is "alligator clip" wrong? I just looked it up and Wikipedia redirected me to "Crocodile Clip."

But Colonel Graff may not pronounce it correctly or care. I will wait until I see Bonzo pronounce it.

This was my favorite novel for many years as a kid. I love everything about it and can't recommend it enough.

Am I wrong in feeling that Stephenson used to write novels, but now he just writes bloated self-indulgent histories with too many characters? His early novels (Zodiac, The Big U, Snow Crash) are delightful and then, something seems to have eaten the part of his brain where humor and fun are housed.

Yes, this exactly. I was so confused and put off when I first tried to read this, but when I went back to it after broadening my literary horizons a bit, I realized how beautiful it is. All of Bradbury's sci-fi has an element of poetry to it.

I also tried to read this when I was too young for it (age 9) and couldn't get through it. I tried a few times that year (as I recognized something in it that appealed to me), but I was unable to get past the first few chapters.

Have you checked out the recent remake? (http://kotaku.com/5979770/yamato…)

The Wikipedia page lists it in kcal which are kilocalories, which are what "food calories" actually represent.

Best mix of: accessible to someone who is new to the series, meets the tropes and systems that made the earlier games great, meets stylized visuals that hold up today.

I am really happy to hear this. The forums over at the website must have had some misinformed people (like me). I am SO pumped for this game after hearing from people here at Kotaku!

Spent waaaay too long trying to make this make sense in my brain before I realized it was a typo.

If we're going with Bowie, how about something off of Ziggy Stardust.

Nope. Checked the website. The physics apply to maneuvering thrusters for dodging right and left but ships top out at a max speed around WWII dogfighting speeds and do 180s like planes. They decided that realistic physics can't be fun.

Well this makes me cautiously optimistic and super excited for this game. I'll reserve judgement until I play it, but that would absolutely make my day.

Did we watch the same footage? Because I saw a bunch of fighter-type craft banking with their wings.

Am I the only one who would really like to see a space combat game with actual space physics? As in, not just planes with a dark background but: no air-braking; expending equal fuel to slow as to speed up; pilots having g-force limits, but drones able to accelerate much faster; true 3d / having to define your own…

Arthur C Clarke's short story: "Rescue Party" puts humans not in an evil or violent light, but certainly in a scary one. Definitely worth reading.

I find that PopSci draws a certain crowd due to their poorly sourced/researched material. Often times I read an article only to think "I read this elsewhere, and it was much better written."

Unless you consider Mike Carey's Lucifer spin-off to be canon (which it would be perfectly reasonable not to), in which case (spoiler) Lucifer ends up becoming the new creator (or, at least, tries his hand at if for a while).

As I understand it, this is a lightning rod which has failed to do its duty. The job of a lightning rod is actually to disperse charge in order to prevent a lightning strike from happening. It is only when the charge builds up despite the rod's best efforts that you get a strike.