Sci-Fi Storm

That Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan tunic worn by Captain Kirk we told you about a couple of weeks ago? The final price ended up being $44,812.

or rather, in Vulcan. Vulcan, Alberta, Canada, founded in the 1900s.

As I suggest in my blog entry (Your Child Can Be Born on Vulcan), wouldn’t it be totally cool for your child to be born in Vulcan? If you’re nine months pregnant, and healthy with it, and have the funds, why not give it a try?

Then, whenever your child is asked where he or she is from, they’ll be able to say with perfect truth, Vulcan.

Just think of putting this on and yelling, “KHAN!!!!!!!” Admiral Kirk’s set-worn jacket and shirt from Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan is up for auction at Heritage Auction Galleries. Also included are the trousers worn by Leon Russom, who wore the same jacket in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country as Starfleet’s Commander-in-Chief. Opening bid: $10,000, with the estimated winning bid to be in excess of $20,000.

I was thinking about something recently, and a discussion on a mailing list provoked my mind to come up with a new term. “Unrealitivity” – A merger of “unreal” and “relativity” (as in Einstein’s theories of…). It is any sort of SF technology or phenomenon that allows for incredible speeds without regards for relativity, speed of light, acceleration forces, etc. without any sort of basis in other potential theories or at least a technical explanation – like warp drive, hyperspace, etc. For instance: “The nuclear waste dump that exploded on the dark side of the moon thrust it out of Earth’s orbit at unrealitivistic speeds across the universe…” Or, “The spaceship’s unrealitivity drive brought them to Tau Ceti in two days…”

A Google search at least seems to indicate that it is fairly unique, with only a handful of hits and nothings to indicate usage other than a mistyped word…

The Thunder Child fantasy and science fiction webzine has established a new e-publishing arm, Sacred Poet Press. Our first book is From Forry Ackerman to Orson Welles: The Views and Reviews of Steve Vertlieb.

Check out all the details at: http://dailyspace.blogspot.com/2010/04/from-forry-ackerman-to-orson-welles.html

The 2009 class of movies being preserved in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry includes 1957’s The Incredible Shrinking Man, the only obviously SF film, although 1979’s The Muppet Movie and Michael Jackson’s Thriller are included in some broad lists…

I’d long heard of Horace L. Gold (and L. Sprague de Camp’s) “most terrifying story to ever appear in Unknown,” novella, None But Lucifer, but I hadn’t realized it was available to be read, not only in print but also online – for free, thanks to Galaxyezine.com

I share some infor about it at:
http://dailyspace.blogspot.com/2009/12/read-none-but-lucifer.html

Rocketry expert Willy Ley acted as science editor for Galaxy magazine for about ten years. Galaxy was published by Horace Gold. It folded in 1980. There is a webzine, galaxyezine.com, from which I found these two videos, uploaded to YouTube. In them, E.L. Gold tells a couple of amusing Willy Ley stories.

The Thunder Child is launching a couple of new blogs for the new year, one on space exploration and one on marine exploration.

For the stories on Willy Ley (and Gold does a good German accent) check out: http://spaceexplorationchronicles.blogspot.com/2009/12/willy-ley-and-galaxy-and-rockets.html

The Thunder Child webzine has begun experimenting with Hubpages, and to that end we’ve uploaded an article about Willy Ley there.

Willy Ley, one of the founders of the German Rocket Society and an acknowledged expert on the subject, left Germany as soon as Hitler came to power (out of conviction rather than fear, as he wasn’t Jewish) and eventually settled in the US, where he became friends with Isaac Asimov and a host of science fiction writers, wrote science essays for Galaxy, and so on.

Check the article out at http://hubpages.com/hub/Willy-Ley-Science-Popularizer-Extraordinaire.

Patrick Stewart is about to be addressed as “Sir” for real – he is to be knighted during this year’s New Years honors.