Sci-Fi Storm

Star Trek: Into Darkness, the second adventure in J.J. Abrams rebooted Star Trek franchise, is out on [sfs=1342]Blu-ray[/sfs] and [sfs=1343]DVD[/sfs] next Tuesday…is the Blu-ray worth it? I’d say a conditional Yes. What may be a deciding factor is how much you like special features.

First, some of the technical details…I will talk about the film later for those who would still like to avoid the “big spoiler” that is probably widely known across the interwebs by now…

The Blu-ray version of the movie comes on a single disc, with the 3D version on another disc, and both come with the feature alone on separate DVD…there is no additional special features disc included. The feature is in full 1080p, with a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 audio track (no DTS-HD track), as well as Dolby 5.1 English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, plus English Audio Description. It is also captioned in English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

The feature looks amazing on Blu-ray…and that is very important to this film, because the visuals are top notch, and there are a LOT of them. Spectacular scenes abound. The audio quality is good, although when listening just through my TV set was a little unbalanced volume-wise. At times the audio had to be turned way up to hear dialog, but then blasted the ears during fight scenes. I think this may be fairly typical however of most Blu-rays through my TV system, however, but I’m still on the search for a new HD-capable receiver.
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The Hugo Awards were presented this weekend! Here is the list of winners:

Best Novel:

[asin=0765334798]Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas[/asin], John Scalzi (Tor)

Best Novella:

[asin=1616960922]The Emperor’s Soul[/asin], Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon Publications)

Best Novelette:

“The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”, Pat Cadigan (Edge of Infinity, Solaris)

Best Short Story:

“Mono no Aware”, Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC)

Best Related Work:

Writing Excuses Season Seven, Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler and Jordan Sanderson

Best Graphic Story:

[asin=1607066017]Saga, Volume One[/asin], written by Brian K. Vaughn, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form:

[sfs=1249]The Avengers[/sfs], Screenplay & Directed by Joss Whedon (Marvel Studios, Disney, Paramount)
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I sadly report that according to Emily Pohl-Weary, his grandaughter, via a tweet, SFWA Grand Master Frederik Pohl passed away at the age of 93.

Pohl was named the 12th Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America organization back in 1993, and served as its president from 1974-1976. He won the Hugo Award in 1978 for [asin=0345475836]Gateway[/asin], three more as editor of If Magazine from 1966-1968, and Nebulas in 1976 for [asin=0765321785]Man Plus[/asin] and 1977 for Gateway.