Category: Sci-Friday

For this Sci-Friday, I’m sharing this Gus Johnson clip … he loves SF but doesn’t mind making fun of it. In ‘my life as a non star wars fan,’ you’ll see what life is like for people who think Jar Jar is the pinnacle of Star Wars lore.

Hope you enjoy “Life as a Non-Star Wars Fan” as much as you enjoy your weekend. And if you like Sci-Friday, you can go down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Happy Friday and enjoy your weekend!

For this Friday, enjoy a short film about a robot on the run. ‘Exile’ is quick, but compelling. Great CGI and decent performances by the two human actors.

I’d love to write some of my shorts into a Dust production. Anyone know how to reach out?

No matter what, have a great weekend! 🙂

For today’s Sci-Friday, enjoy ‘Russian Cyberpunk Farm,’ a tongue-in-cheek scifi short about life in a Russian village enabled by technology. If you love the work of Simon Stalenhag, this is your jam. Watch it all the way to the end, it’s got a wicked twist:

Want to work on the Russian Cyberpunk Farm? Act now, applications are running out fast! Have a great weekend and keep on dreaming!

The thing I love about nerds is that they make everything amazing, even in little ways. In today’s example, a nerd plays the Star Wars Imperial Theme with a coffee stirrer.

Is this the best video ever? No, but that’s not the point. If you look for small ways to change the world, they add up.

What better way to enjoy Sci-Friday #88 than 88MPH of fun, reliving some of the golden era of 80s scifi. Here are some behind-the-scenes looks at Back to the Future. As you’ll quickly find out, success was by no means assured.

 

This Sci-Friday comes courtesy the former Soviet Union. ‘Soviet futurism’ was a concept early on in the USSR, but it continued throughout the regime in the form of some fascinating concept art. Today, let’s explore thing right out of a retrofuturism catalog – a Scifi Soviet Smart Home!

How did this start? Two words: Russian Futurism. That’s “the broad term for a movement of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti’s “Manifesto of Futurism,” which espoused the rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, youth, industry, destruction of academies, museums, and urbanism;[1] it also advocated the modernization and cultural rejuvenation.”

The Soviets were keen on describing what type of future they were hurtling toward, and made use of books, art, and movies to help explain what they were hoping to achieve.

“In 1970, the staff of the Soviet journal “Science and Technology” predicted full automation of the construction of buildings, roads, dams and the emergence of a whole network of ground and air transport, operated by an autopilot, by 2000 … One of the prototypes of the modern smart home was the project of electronic equipment “Sphinx” (a superfunctional integrated communication system).” – from slavorum.org

Kick back, and enjoy this video walkthrough of the Scifi Soviet Smart Home “Sphinx”:

You can read more about the Sphinx home here. 

I wrote a scifi short about the bad side of smart homes, but this is still interesting nonetheless. Enjoy and Happy Friday!

 

I love the transition of concept art to film – here’s a beautiful example: art from Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis.’ If you haven’t seen it, get off your butt this instant. From 1927, Metropolis is still considered one of the most interesting, impactful science fiction movies ever made.

   

   

   

Seeing a hundred year-old version of dystopia, and in some ways seeing it played out in modern life, gives you a lot to think about. William Gibson is famous for saying: “All fiction, whether straight or genre, whether literature or Literature, is a personal reinterpretation of its writers’ existence during the time the fiction was written.” I’d be interested to know what Lang and other cast members were trying to interpret from their time.

Happy Friday, and have a great weekend! 😀