Science Fiction Thursday: 'Star Wars', 'Luna Park', and the Ennies

By Alexander Joenks | Science Fiction | September 10, 2015 |

By Alexander Joenks | Science Fiction | September 10, 2015 |

Hello everyone, I believe that we are long overdue for science fiction Thursday, and for my dereliction of duty I recognize that I am a sinner in the hands of an angry genre.

For those of you who enjoy rolling the dice the old-fashioned way, you might be interested to know that the annual roleplaying game awards landed a few weeks ago. They’re called the Ennies because of reasons and you can find the results here. Basically, Dungeons and Dragons won every single category due to the fifth edition of the game coming out in the last year along with all the various supplements that fit into all the different categories. The voting must work like the Teen Choice Awards or something, because those results are just sad.

This is the first year I’ve notice the Ennies come out. It’s probably also the last because don’t get me started on fifth edition. I mean, it’s not as bad as the catastrophe of fourth edition, but it’s basically glossy shit. To me this is like finding out about the Oscars for the first time and seeing that Transformers 7 swept the slate. If you want to play D&D, play Pathfinder. If you don’t want to play D&D, I’ve got a shelf of other RPGs from other publishers that go fantastically creative places.

Star Wars news? STAR WARS NEWS. Episode VIII filming begins this weekend, so if you happen to be in Ireland, go wander through some shots. I’m just excited because we already have had a desert planet, a swamp planet, and an ice planet, so I can only assume that Rian Johnson is shooting in Ireland in order to have a drunk planet.

(source: SlashFilm)

Oh, but before you get too excited, you should know that it’s been announced now that The Force Awakens will open in Britain the day before it does in the United States. Britain? BRITAIN? Imperial forces universally have British accents, and you expect this to stand? The Emperor has already won.

(source: The Guardian)

Next tid bit? Luna Park is a film that Doug Liman, who gave us the wonderful Edge of Tomorrow, has been trying to get made since 2011. It got shelved then because the budget got too big. But then Tom Cruise liked working with him so much, that he is throwing weight behind the project now, and it looks like it might happen. Rebels go to the moon to steal an energy source. I assume it’s a monolith. Or it’s secretly a $100 million live action Futurama sequel.

(Source: Variety)

For real world science fiction we have the fact that in addition to putting boots on the ground in Syria, the Russians are waking up a virus that has been frozen for 30,000 years. I think it is important to both recognize that this really cool science and that it is absolutely necessary to make as many jokes as possible about how this is the start of every sci-fi horror movie ever.

(Source: Telegraph)

Finally, we often talk about books in this space, especially in the comments (where I’ve picked up a number of recommendations from you fine folks). And over the summer, we tried Sci-Fi movie club, but it just didn’t get much traction, even though there was a lot of interest in it initially. So I thought we’d try something out, an experiment if you will.

A book and a movie.

We’ll talk about them next week in Sci-Fi Thursday, me briefly, and you in all your glory in the comments. If you’ve got a chance, give The Brass Teapot a watch on Netflix (it’s fantastic). And pick up The Shepherd’s Crown, which is Terry Pratchett’s final novel, featuring Tiffany Aching and assuredly an ocean of your own tears.