******SPACESHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!****** One day, back in 2004, I was perusing my local Barnes & Noble bookstore when I came across a large coffee table book titled “Voyage to the Planets” (originally titled “Space Odyssey” in the UK), written by Tim Haines and Christopher Riley. The cover featured a photorealistic image of a young astronaut standing…
Tag: Mars
“Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (1964) gets some overdue recognition…
*****MARTIAN POLAR CAP-SIZED SPOILERS!***** As a kid in the 1970s, I remember staying up very late one night (well after my family had gone to sleep) to watch a movie on TV called “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (1964). While the title sounded a bit goofy, the movie was amazing. I sat in rapt attention (even…
AppleTV’s “For All Mankind” season 4; what goes up, must come down…
******ASTEROID-SIZED SPOILERS!****** I’d like to reiterate my tremendous love for Ron Moore’s “For All Mankind”; it’s a brilliant alternate-reality series, which repeatedly demonstrates a healthy respect for authentic space science as well. The characters (past and present) are deeply compelling, with issues of sexism and racism left largely in humanity’s rear-view mirror as it begins…
“Capricorn One” (1978) takes an all-star cast down a conspiratorial rabbit hole…
*****ROCKET-SIZED SPOILERS!***** I feel the need to preface this review/analysis of 1978’s “Capricorn One” with a bit of personal opinion, since we live in an age where easily verifiable and demonstrable facts are currently called into question (i.e, the rise of Flat Earth and anti-vaccination movements). I am not, nor have I ever been someone…
“The Night That Panicked America” (1975) is a little-seen TV-movie about the greatest Halloween prank ever played…
“The War of the Worlds“ In 1897, the seminal sci-fi classic “The War of the Worlds,” by H. G. Wells, was serialized in Pearson’s and Cosmopolitan magazines, before being published as a novel a year later. The story concerned an invasion of Earth by Martians piloting massive tripod machines. This invading vanguard ravages the English…
“John Carter” (2012), the unfairly maligned adaptation of the original space hero…
Before Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and Luke Skywalker… I was born about a half-century too late to have been among the first generation to read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars” books, but my own first inklings of them came via Carl Sagan’s landmark 1980 PBS TV series, “COSMOS.” The late pop scientist reminisced…
The novels of Andy Weir: “The Martian,” “Artemis” and “Project Hail Mary”…
New Voice. As a lifelong fan of science fiction, I’m not embarrassed to admit that sometimes the genre can fall a bit short in a couple of areas; humor and actual science. Much of the early literary sci-fi I’ve read in my life came from greats like Ray Bradbury (my all-time favorite author), H.G. Wells,…
The Planetary Society celebrates a trio of space missions with “Planetfest ’21: To Mars and Back Again”…
The Planetary Society. Founded in 1980, The Planetary Society was the dream of Dr. Bruce Murray, Dr. Carl Sagan, and Dr. Louis Friedman. The three men were seeking to create a privately funded, non-profit organization devoted to the exploration of our solar system, as well as popularizing education in space science. I joined as an…
Season 5 of “The Expanse” returns to our solar system with a bang…
*****ASTEROID-SIZED SPOILERS AHEAD!!***** I was a Johnny-come-lately to “The Expanse,” and I freely admit that I’ve not yet read the books (written by “James S. A. Corey”; pen name for writers Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck). In fact, I almost gave up on the show a few episodes into season one because it was so…
Netflix’s “Away” (2020) is all about family drama, not the final frontier…
Martian Melodrama. Bit of quick preamble; anyone who’s read this site for awhile probably knows that I am an irredeemable Mars-geek, and a sizable chunk of my book and DVD library relates to Mars, either through real-life probe findings or fictional Mars exploits. For me, the gold standard of fictional Mars missions in this past…