TV/Podcast: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Real Time with Bill Maher

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Simon Six

The most recent episode of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher including an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was chatting up his new book Take Me To Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter.

Bill Maher has invited Dr. Tyson multiple times to his program, and it is always a fun show.

The interview covered a variety of topics, but one interesting discussion (following a discussion about anal probes) revolved around how Hollywood almost always portrays aliens as humanoid versus something completely different, such as the rock-like alien in the book and movie Project Hail Mary.

Dr. Tyson noted that most life on earth does not look human, even though all the life on our planet has DNA in common. For example, we share about 20 percent of our genes with a banana. Hence, there is every reason to believe that aliens from distant civilizations will look as different from us as humans are from a banana. It is certainly a different way to look at the galaxy (and the missed opportunities on Star Trek). Here is a clip with him expanding on this argument.

Check out the podcast if you want an entertaining diversion for a few minutes.

Note: If you are interested in the book itself as part of your summer reading, here is the jacket summary:

Take Me to Your Leader is the culmination of a lifetime of fascination, speculation, and the amassing of scientific data about the possibility of Aliens visiting Earth. Drawing on a wealth of depictions from history, literature, pop culture, and film, Tyson applies the universal laws of physics to make the case for what Aliens might look like, act like, how they might travel through the universe to reach us, and what they might think of us upon arrival. Should such an event occur, Tyson further offers useful etiquette tips for your first close encounter.

If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many UFO sightings, or whether Aliens might already be among us, Tyson offers an informed perspective that is both factual and fun. Take Me to Your Leader is a tantalizing exploration of what would be the most mind-blowing experience of your life—the book for anyone who has ever wondered: Are we alone?

Sci-Fi Stories: A New Murderbot Book Arrives, Captive’s War Planned for Prime, and Somewhere Our There Coming to Netflix

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Tor Books

Here are a few sci-fi stories of interest.

—Winter is Coming: “Book review: Platform Decay is Exactly What We Wanted from Martha Wells’s Murderbot Next“

Platform Decay is the eighth book in Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries series, and it gives fans exactly what they love while taking the story in some new directions. If you’ve been following Murderbot since the first book All Systems Red you’ll find plenty to enjoy here...The book picks up after System Collapse (2023). Murderbot gets asked to help with what should be a simple rescue mission. Dr. Ayda Mensah, the person who freed Murderbot and is basically its closest friend, needs help getting some family members off a dangerous space station.

—Polygon: “The Expanse Creators Admit Their New Sci-fi Series will be ‘So Freaking Hard to Adapt’ for TV“

When Syfy began adapting Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck’s space-opera novels The Expanse for television, the authors (who write together under the name James S.A. Corey) were closely involved in the process. Over six seasons and a shift to Prime Video, Franck and Abraham served as screenwriters, producers, media ambassadors, and even walk-on actors. Abraham and Franck are set to have an even bigger role in the developing adaptation of their current book series, The Captive’s War. In 2024, they formed a production company, Expanding Universe, to produce the show, and they already have a development deal with Amazon. But the duo tells Polygon that knowing they’re writing for the screen as well as the page this time around didn’t change their plotting or process at all — which is going to cause a lot of problems in adapting the series for TV.

—Screenrant: “Shawn Levy Confirms New Arrival-Like Netflix Sci-Fi Movie“

Shawn Levy and Netflix unite for an original sci-fi epic.The project, titled Somewhere Out There, is reportedly an “emotional sci-fi” story that is similar to Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, which stars Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. It also apparently resembles Levy and Netflix’s The Adam Project, featuring Mark Ruffalo, Ryan Reynolds, Jennifer Garner, and Zoe Saldaña. The plot follows a widowed father who, while struggling with the loss of his wife, sends a message into outer space. To his surprise, he receives a mysterious response from something or someone. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix has acquired the script for Somewhere Out There, a science fiction film written by Max Taxe, and Levy has signed on to direct the project. The Deadpool & Wolverine director will also serve as a producer for the project through his 21 Laps banner with Dan Levine.

Television: Star City

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Apple TV

We are only one month away from the premiere of Apple TV’s Star City.

Premiering on May 29th, the series is a spin-off from For All Mankind, which is an alternative history showing the race to the Moon and then Mars among the Americans, Soviet, and North Koreans. Star City will focus on the Soviet program, just as For All Mankind focused primarily on the American program.

Apple TV describes the new series in this way:

A bold new chapter inspired by the critically acclaimed space-race drama, “For All Mankind,” “Star City” is a propulsive paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race — when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. But this time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humankind forward.

While For All Mankind was mostly a bombastic show with plenty of American daredevil fun, the Star City promises to be a much darker view of another space program that we only saw in quick glimpses during the first series. Keeping the show interesting and not too bleak may be a challenge.

Will we ever see another spin-off covering the North Korean version of the space race? It is doubtful, yet it would be both fascinating and bleak as well.

I imagine Star City can be a stand-alone series for those who missed For All Mankind, but I think half the fun in watching the new series will be watching where the two stories interweave and discovering what was really happening on the Soviet side.

If history has multiple perspectives, even alternative history, then I look forward to understanding more of the story through more voices.

Credit: Apple TV

Sci-Fi Quote: To Titan and Beyond

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Apple TV

“I think the promise of the show was always that we were going to go beyond just the moon and Mars. I think that’s kind of what I think Titan represents. It’s one of those steps we’ve been looking to make from the very beginning. I will say you’ll see more of it. I don’t want to get into details of what exactly is going to happen, but yes, Titan is very much a plan for this season in particular. So anyone who’s been following so far will see the next steps in the next few episodes.“

-Statement by For All Mankind’s executive producer Ben Nedivi in an interview with ScreenRant regarding the latest season of the television series. The alternative history series started the fifth season with a growing Happy Valley Martian colony. The new space race is aiming for Saturn’s moon. Whether this is the last stop before the series ends with season six is anybody’s guess.

Movie: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Lucasfilm Ltd.

On May 22, The Mandalorian will go from our TV screens to the movie screens with the premiere of The Mandorian and Grogu.

Overall, this is the story in the film (and this trailer helps to visualize it all):

The evil Empire has fallen, and Imperial warlords remain scattered throughout the galaxy. As the fledgling New Republic works to protect everything the Rebellion fought for, they have enlisted the help of legendary Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his young apprentice Grogu.

Not too descriptive, but basically the movie is a mash up of the old Star Wars icons, such as TIE fighters, Jabba the Hutt, and All Terrain Armored Transports (or AT-AT walkers), as well as the unique creations of the TV series, including our green friend Grogu.

I would have liked to see the Andor series brought to the big screen as well, but it may be a bit too cerebral for today’s movie goers. The Mandalorian and Grogu has the feeling of the many comic book superhero films filling the theaters these days, but it is still a little more than that.

In describing Disney’s new Mandalorian series back in 2020, a Guardian critic stated:

First, this is a western. Second, Pascal can do a fair bit with dialogue and movement. He is a badass, for sure, but he is also cynical and purposeful, with a weary wit. He is Robocop. He is Clint Eastwood. He is Ryan Gosling in Drive. He is not messing about and neither is the series, as an over-the-odds, off-the-books job takes our man to a secret bunker crawling with black-and-white stormtroopers, which feels like walking into an underground club in 50s Paris and finding it full of uniformed Nazis. 

This is a fair assessment of what we saw in the three TV seasons. If the movie can maintain this energy, with its usual tinge of humor, it will be worth the ticket price, and more.