The finest modern space opera.

Defiance has a neat premise and is quite watchable. But there is little that is memorable from week to week. It's like Bablyon 5 without G'Kar and Mollari or a blandified Firefly. Definitely a guilty pleasure for now.

Yes, I started out enjoying B5 but not particularly invested in it. But then I caught the last episode of Season 1 (Chrysalis) and was hooked. It had a forward momentum that Trek never equaled. For sure, the quality was uneven - but then the first three seasons of TNG and DS9 were dull going on unwatchable. I always…

Great idea. The aesthetic and feel of B5 - particularly in the first two seasons, was a kick in the teeth for SF Tv, making Trek look stale and simplistic. I noticed that the script and plotting suffered when JMS took exclusive charge of writing in Season 3.

The Stone in Greg Bear's Eon is the best and the biggest BDO: it goes on forever.

No other science fiction series has come near BSG in terms of the complexity of its themes or its execution, but even Moore's BSG was hamstrung by the mythology of the original series. For example, the references to contemporary culture like "All along the Watchtower" would have made sense if the series had been set…

Along with Stapledon, Cordwainer Smith was arguably the first imaginer of posthuman futures: worlds so "other" that humans, as we presently conceive them, do not really fit into them. The Cordwainer Smith story "The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal" is magnificently strange.

Yes, Wolfe is one of the best writers in any genre. I know this sounds a bit worthy, but The Book of the New Sun and the fifth Head of Cerberus ought to be viewed as classics of World Literature. They are that good.

It's true. I read Enders Game and found it entirely unmemorable. The Forever War, on the other hand, is an authentic classic.

This could be great. Children of Men is one of the best modern SF films :)

Great article. I wonder if Church-Turing is such an issue, though. There's something to be said for the claim that representation-level state transitions are not representable as tractably computable programs, let alone Turing computable ones. But would this matter if you could compute the input-output relations of…

Great article. I wonder if Church-Turing is such an issue, though. There's something to be said for the claim that representation-level state transitions are not even representable as tractably computable, let alone Turing computable. But would this matter if you could compute the input-output relations of the brain's…

I always preferred B5 to DS9. Despite some rough edges, it integrated political conspiracies and transcendent threat more convincingly. Some brilliant Aliens too: G'Kar was fantastically well played and the Shadows . . . I rest my case.

It's a pity that the Card is a homophobe. It's also a pity that the first adaptation of a hard SF book for ages has to be of this routine piece of military SF when there's work by Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds and Charles Stross (to name but three). What about The Forever War for Christ's sake?

Very excited about Dr Strange and quite titillated at the prospect of a half decent Star Wars movie.

I've a lot of affection for Fuest's film of Moorcock's The Final Programme, if only because it's Jerry Cornelius' only cinematic appearance. Moorcock hated it, for reasons I can appreciate.

No Thomas Ligotti? I rest my case!

First-Class started well, but X2 was a far more convincing ensemble movie.

If Terra Nova is 'our last great hope' for SF tv, we are surely doomed. The characterization and dialogue belong to Television's Triassic or an alternative universe in which Twin Peaks, Buffy or BSG had never happened. There are no intriguing plot layers, no speculative interest, just some average CGI and some…