There's Star Trek: The Art of the Film, but no blueprints, no aliens guide, no future histories, no ships calendars, no role-playing games, no novelizations. ... There's little online to fill in the gaps either. It's obvious that J.J. and company pulled most of the new universe out of their ass and that there's little…

A supernova expanding at superluminal speed can only be destroyed with a black hole massive enough to suck it back in, and, I would have to assume, all the matter in the galaxy with it. How is red matter a good solution?

A telling sign that Abrams' version of Star Trek isn't being received well is the almost complete absence of tie-in books and other products. Where are all the collectibles, JJ? Even Avatar has more.

And traveling *through* a black hole into the past. A black hole, as I understand it, is one of the densest, most solid things in the universe.

I see your point. I still laugh at the scene from TNG where Picard has a pile of PADDs on his desk because he's doing "paperwork." What? The Enterprise-D doesn't have WiFi?

Still, there are aspects of Trek that go beyond gee-whiz-yet-plausible technology. There are the plot devices that are there to move the story…

You forgot Lost.

I think the point of The Lovely Bones is that heaven really isn't such a bad place, except Susie's inability to let go and her desire to protect those left behind are holding her back. Heaven even has counselors to help with the transition, but Susie isn't getting with the program.

It's a Federation starship, with structural integrity fields and a superunobtainium hull. The Enterprise eats submarines for breakfast.

I loved Pleasantville too. When Jeff Daniels wipes away Joan Allen's monochrome makeup, it gets me every time.

My first impression of Reese Witherspoon was formed by "The Election " and reinforced by "Pleasantville." She sets her chin a certain way and let's rip on you. America's Sweetheart? I think you have her confused with Amy Adams.

And, apparently, you can make a moon explode sideways with no fragments falling into the nearby planet's gravity well. And tidal waves caused by the sideways explosion can create rocky cave systems over the Statue of Liberty. The movie was all eye-candy with little real-world grounding. Defiance, on SyFy, has a more…

Oh yeah? Suck on this, muggles! http://www.luxury-insider.com/luxury-news/2012/08/jk-rowling-conjures-up-40-foot-tree-houses-for-kids

When I was a teenager, the two best maps for me were Tolkien's Middle Earth and Niven's Ringworld. I can't find the full map, but this drawing if the Oval Ocean expresses mind-blowing scale. The tiny archipelagos replicate the full-scale continental masses of dozens of planets.

The Joseph Fiennes bouts with alcoholism stuff was a bit overwrought, but when Fast Forward finally reunited the American who glimpsed his future Japanese lover, it was pure poetry.

This place, called the Mushroom House, is about 15 minutes from where I work in Rochester, N.Y. It was up for sale a couple of years ago. http://www.zillowblog.com/2011-07-19/hou…

My fave is the causality violation device from Charlie Stross's "Iron Sunrise." It's a time warp bubble that encloses a star and fast-ages it through its sequences until just before supernova. From the outsider perspective, the star just explodes randomly, then persists as a dead globe of iron. Good times.

1979, I was ten and my friend's dad ran the college terminal lab. There were no PCs; just 20 amber-screen terminals networked into the mainframe. My friend wrote an elaborate "choose-your-own-adventure" roleplaying game he called "Masters of War." I made a copy of it and rewrote the text to be highly-pornographic.…

You've got to read Kim Stanley Robinson's "2312," a grand tour of the Solar System. It's got a lot of KSR's typical navel-gazing, but also takes the reader to many of the system's planets and moons.

This is how Americans used to salute the flag during the Pledge if Allegiance.

You just need one of these jobbies. They use condensation instead of hot air. The clothes come out ever-so slightly damp to the touch, the dry on your hanger. http://www.ajmadison.com/b.php/Washer+Dryer+Combos/N~70