Science Fiction is a bit of a dirty word when it comes to the mainstream, just look where the books are usualy sectioned: at the back, barely lit and poorly kept. Just look at the movies (or don't even). It's mostly seen as the fodder of spotty teenage buys which is a shame. To digress, what needs to happen is an image makeover much like Country music made some years back (dropping the "Western" stigma).
The best SF IMO is the soft stuff, something that happens to have an SF element, but isn't out and out hard core with lots of pseudo techno-speak.
Book-wise that'd be a lot of stuff by P.K. Dick, The Man In The High Castle, Time Out Of Joint, Counter Clock World and, A Scanner Darkly.
Pulp fiction also makes worthwhile reading, so Robert A Heinlein's classic Starship Troopers and the whole EE "Doc" Smith series.
On film you simply must see Tetsuo: Ironman, Akira and the two usual suspects, Blade Runner (directors cut of course!) and 2001: A Space Oddysey
I'd also name check The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham - haven't started it yet though.
Just looked at the screenshot - anyone else notice that the KPanel reports the time to be 2:09 PM, but Opera reckons it's 2:08 PM? Opera don't mention any time problems on their (admittedly small) FAQ.
The graph is an impresive sight, it'd be interesting to see some of the major landmarks plotted against it. Events such as the release of the major distributions from the big players and recently the 2.2x kernel release and more recent still the findings of fact in the DOJ vs MS trial.
I haven't managed to try this out yet (BeOS doesn't support CHAP, but that's another story), but it looks really promising.
They support ICQ, Jabber and AOL IM, so far they've released the ICQ part for testing and the rest is upcoming, although how upcoming is another matter - the last update on the site was August 2nd. Gimmick
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Science Fiction is a bit of a dirty word when it comes to the mainstream, just look where the books are usualy sectioned: at the back, barely lit and poorly kept. Just look at the movies (or don't even). It's mostly seen as the fodder of spotty teenage buys which is a shame.
To digress, what needs to happen is an image makeover much like Country music made some years back (dropping the "Western" stigma).
The best SF IMO is the soft stuff, something that happens to have an SF element, but isn't out and out hard core with lots of pseudo techno-speak.
Book-wise that'd be a lot of stuff by P.K. Dick, The Man In The High Castle, Time Out Of Joint, Counter Clock World and, A Scanner Darkly.
Pulp fiction also makes worthwhile reading, so Robert A Heinlein's classic Starship Troopers and the whole EE "Doc" Smith series.
On film you simply must see Tetsuo: Ironman, Akira and the two usual suspects, Blade Runner (directors cut of course!) and 2001: A Space Oddysey
I'd also name check The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham - haven't started it yet though.
Just looked at the screenshot - anyone
else notice that the KPanel reports the time to be 2:09 PM, but Opera reckons
it's 2:08 PM? Opera don't mention any time problems on their (admittedly small)
FAQ.
The graph is an impresive sight, it'd be interesting to see some of the major landmarks plotted against it. Events such as the release of the major distributions from the big players and recently the 2.2x kernel release and more recent still the findings of fact in the DOJ vs MS trial.
I haven't managed to try this out yet (BeOS doesn't support CHAP, but that's another story), but it looks really promising.
They support ICQ, Jabber and AOL IM, so far they've released the ICQ part for testing and the rest is upcoming, although how upcoming is another matter - the last update on the site was August 2nd.
Gimmick