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I am trying to find the name of a Science Fiction story I read thirty to forty years ago. The plot line revolves around a former Mercenary stranded on a newly settled planet. The leaders of the planet have decided that they have about a hundred years to get their population up to a level that will allow them to fend off others. The solution is to pair post pubescent women with slightly older men and breed as rapidly as possible while building the infrastructure necessary for a society. I seem to remember that the main item of value on...

BBC America Series Premiere: Saturday, April 19th at 10/9c From Star Wars to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and from Jurassic Park to Doctor Who, each program is packed with contributors behind these creations and traces the developments of Robots, Space, Invasion and Time. Narrated by Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who writer, actor, and co-creator of the BBC’s Sherlock, the series determines why science fiction is not merely a genre… for its audience it’s a portal to a multi-verse – one that is all too easy to get lost in... Home | About the show | Episode Guide | Photos | Videos

While we wait to see if freshmen series like Almost Human and Tomorrow People survive for a second year, we thought it’d be a good time to take a look back at some of our favorite one-season sci-fi wonders.We’re drawing close to the dog days of summer, and though there’s more original sci-fi fare than there used to be, it’s still essentially the doldrums for a genre fan. Luckily for all of us, that’s where streaming services like Netflix come in handy. What better way to spend the downtime than to catch up on some gems that never got a...

Upcoming Johnny Depp-starring sci-fi thriller Transcendence will open in China as a day-and-date release with the United States on April 18 -- and China will be the only territory where the film will be screened in 3D, the Beijing-based studio DMG, co-producers of the film with Alcon Entertainment and Warner Bros., told The Hollywood Reporter.

In 1898, British writer H. G. Wells wrote "The War of the Worlds," a science-fiction novel in which Martians invade the Earth and nearly decimate humanity. A decade later, in what was then the Russian Empire, writer and Marxist revolutionary Alexander Bogdanov wrote his novel "Red Star," also about Martians landing on Earth. But in Bogdanov's novel, the Martians are not violent or monstrous. Instead, they invite the main character, a young Russian student named Leonid, back to the Red Planet to see the Martians' civilization: a thriving, peaceful — and communist — utopia. The optimism of "Red Star" was...

Starman actor Ken Utsui passed away on March 14, 2014, of chronic respiratory failure. He was 82. Although Utsui was a prolific actor for many decades, he is best known in the United States as Starman (a.k.a. Super Giant), the Shintoho superhero who fought a bevy of outlandish creatures in the late 1950s.

Richard Coogan, who played Captain Video on the early TV sci-fi adventure series Captain Video and His Video Rangers, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 99.

Dubai: At a conference in Dubai this week, an American futurist painted an intriguing, at times unsettling, picture of the coming world. As Dr Peter Diamandis went over his presentation slides at The Government Summit on Tuesday, there were plenty of raised eyebrows. In the future, the slides suggested, privacy will be a thing of the past, robots will take over our jobs, 3D printers will pop out everything from human organs to houses, and man will mine asteroids in deep space for unfathomable mineral wealth. The 58-year-old said hyper-tech breakthroughs are already hurtling us towards that future, today. “The...

I found this particular old time radio episode very reminiscent of themes in Star Trek, Outer Limits, Ray Bradbury, and Twilight Zone. Furthermore, it was very interesting to hear about the "Holodeck" and distopian, robotic, disassociated society the family lives in. I think you will find the same similarities and more, and look forward to comments. You can find this episode at http://archive.org. I posted the original podcast link to give props to the podcast that put this one online for their show.

It's another year chock full of exciting pictures to look forward to!

Actress Alexandra Bastedo, best known for her role in the 1960s television sci-fi series The Champions, has died aged 67 following a long illness.

Imagine a world where a handheld gadget scans your body and diagnoses illnesses in seconds - reducing hospital visits and potentially saving your life. It may sound like the work of science fiction but engineers in California have taken their lead from the Star Trek franchise and developed a real-life version of the show’s medical tricorder. The Scanadu Scout can read a person’s temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and more, simply being held against their forehead. It was developed by Scanadu’s CEO Walter De Brouwer, 56, at Nasa’s Ames Research Centre in California. A prototype of the Scout was...

Happy National Science Fiction Day! January 2nd is the day selected for this wonderful holiday because it was Isaac Asimov's birthday. It's a day to celebrate, appreciate, and even read some of the many science fiction offerings at your local library, bookstore, website, or your own bookshelf.

I have been down with a nasty cold for the last few weeks. The good side of that is that I have been catching up with my reading, which included the last couple of issues of "Analog...Science Fiction and Fact". I was reading along and enjoying the stories, until I got to "Not for Sissies" by Jerry Oltion in the March 2014 issue, at which point my jaw dropped. This story is nothing more than gay pornography. The first line is: "Nathan was eating breakfast in the kitchen when his husband, Greg, announced that he was going to die." And...

It would be easy to miss, but December 18 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alfred Bester, one of the pioneers of modern science fiction. A Manhattan native, Bester began his career as a writer in earnest in the 1940s, publishing pulp science fiction, penning radio scripts, and doing work for DC Comics on Superman and Green Lantern titles. In the 1950s, however, he followed the trend of science fiction away from the short story magazine world to the realm of novels. It was in this decade that he wrote two of the genre’s most groundbreaking works, The Demolished...

THERE THEY were, just below Martha Stewart and Paula Deen and Allure in the magazine rack at the supermarket: the gun periodicals. I bought three. Back at the place where I was staying — this was in upstate New York, a week ago — I pored over the ads and the editorial content, trying to understand what they were saying, and to whom. First, they want you to buy a gun. It will probably not be your first gun; it will be an addition to, and an improvement on, the gun or guns you already own. It may deliver “precision...

Everybody (well, everybody who reads sf/fantasy) has their favorite novels in each genre...which are usually a bunch of other people's favorite novels as well. This only makes sense, since cream rises to the top. But even so, there are plenty of obscure books that for whatever reason, never really caught on. They might well be great reads, but no one seems to have heard of them...so what's your favorite sf and fantasy novel that still lies in not-so-deserved obscurity? With any luck, we'll all discover a bunch of great books that we've never heard of before! I'll start off with...

One of the things that makes science fiction so popular is that it means many things to many people. Some people will insist that they are not even reading science fiction when they read a Star Wars novel or a novel dealing with alternate history. That is what makes Sci-Fi so wonderful! It’s easy to love and difficult to define. What other genre has so many sub-genres? You have hard Sci-fi, often times written by people who actually were scientists. There’s Cyber Punk, adventurous Space Opera, Military Sci-Fi, Alternate History, Steam Punk, and even Space Westerns. Something for almost everybody!...

There are so many amazing science fiction movies that it's hard to include all the greats in a list of 50. It may not be the same 50 you'd pick, but I hope you enjoy this list of must-sees. How many have you seen? Click items to mark as completed.

Investigations underwayAir India said Tuesday an investigation was underway after a passenger found worms in his sandwich mid-flight. The passenger made the discovery during a flight from New York to New Delhi on September 28 on India's struggling flagship carrier. The passenger reported the incident to Air India, but said he did not hear anything back for two weeks, according to the Press Trust of India. "We are investigating the caterer regarding this incident," airline spokesman Prasad Rao told AFP in New Delhi. The spokesman said the airline maintained high standards, including hygiene conditions, adding that this was a "very...