Will it also develop the physique and muscle memory required for these kinds of physical skills? In fiction this always seems like the biggest stumbling block to this concept. (Obviously, the Matrix sidesteps this by removing your physical body from the equation, but Limitless sure as hell didn't.)

The Tolkien template basically took over the fantasy genre in the 1960s, and not long afterwards came the deconstructions and "gritty" takes (Moorcock, Cook, etc.). The persistent Tolkien stranglehold on the literary genre finally broke in the late 90s—just as Tolkien and Harry Potter became hugely successful on the…

Word of Roddenberry (from an interview with George Takei) is that Sulu was supposed to be multi-ethnic Asian, not specifically Japanese: Sulu isn't a Japanese name because it has an "L" sound in it, and the character didn't have a first name until the 1980s. (Metamorphosis Alpha lists several theories though.)…

I don't think it's completely unfair. His last published work, the essay collection A Man Without a Country, is a lot of fond reminiscing about earlier days, combined with a lot of yelling at the kids on his lawn and dark forecasts about the future. That was published a good two years before his death.

Exactly, the same thing happened with J. K. Rowling: she had to brief the Harry Potter filmmakers on what seemingly-insignificant parts couldn't be cut out.

I think it's just called an orbital ring.

The revered figures of the Scientific Revolution were mostly physicists, especially astrophysicists. Most people can name Newton, Galileo, Einstein, Hawking, Sagan—quite a few probably know of Kepler, Brahe, Oppenheimer, Fermi. How many people have heard of Hooke or Leeuwenhoek?

Possibly my favourite vampire story ever. Don Ysidro is very charming and compelling and even a bit sympathetic, but he never ceases to be a horrifying monster. James Asher, the protagonist, sympathizes with Ysidro, but only in the way one might rationalize, if one has to tolerate some level of crime in society, the…

ZA WARUDO!

Season 2 is definitely the most uneven season, since it has all the great episodes you mention along with some of the worst episodes of the series (The Child, Unnatural Selection, The OUTRAGEOUS Okona, The Royale, Shades of Grey).

What all these fine people said. A dystopia is a society calling itself utopian, but actually false or failed. They can be post-apocalyptic or not, but the former is common because it's an easy device to explain why the dystopia was founded in the first place.

Agreed. A lack of emotions is hardly a problem in today's world. We could stand with people distancing their decision-making from their emotions a bit more often.

Y the Last Man is hardly a dystopia. Some of the cultures described within it (e.g., the Amazons) might be.

It's depressing to read about a whole bunch of movies that just shouldn't be made first thing in the morning.

Ahem. Everyone's had their way with John Constantine. But usually for the better. Obviously Garth Ennis' Hellblazer run is the signature version of the character, but most versions have been decent. Except maybe his cameo in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Perfect? No. But the best comic story ever written? Quite probably, until something else comes along and takes the crown. Haven't really seen any serious contenders yet.

It did a great job of synching up with Carpenter's version and preserving the mythology of that film, more or less. It pretty much failed at everything else. The tension wasn't bad until the alien actually shows up. After that, it's pretty much a snorefest. The alien isn't really horrifying and the scares are…

The prediction of Nunavut, and especially a Nunavut with a university hosting an international academic seminar is pretty good authorial shorthand for "in the far future, the world as you know it is different" (currently, Nunavut has a single multi-campus college that only offers a few university-level degrees in…

Agreed. But a wide theatrical rerelease of the original definitely is (no 3D though, please). The future predicted in that film is a lot closer to us now than it was in 1987.

Didn't some of the Predator comics by Dark Horse explore these kinds of stories? I remember my friend really liking those.