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  Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2012 @ 9:00pm

  
  

  firefly & Aliens

  Found out today that Firefly and Aliens exist in the same universe... so that also mean Predators exist in the Firefly universe, too.
  http://screencrush.com/firefly-prometheus/

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  Rekrul, 25 May 2012 @ 12:02am

  
  

  Building the Enterprise...

  Interesting that he chose the refit Enterprise rather than the original.
  
  As for the serenity model;
  
  For those who would like to own a replica, but can't afford an expensive garage kit, there's a very detailed paper replica that you can download and print out. Photos of the finished model look quite impressive.

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  Richard, 27 May 2012 @ 12:00am

  
  

  Accurate versus inaccurate predictions

  With science fiction, an activity one could do is to compare the predictions that came true to the predictions that haven't happened yet (and, for that matter, technologies that actually came into existence but which were not anticipated in the past by science fiction.) In "When the Tripods Came," the 1984 prequel to the Tripods trilogy by John Christopher, the author talks about science fiction predictions failing many more times often than successfully guessing future developments. (To be sure, there have been predictions that came out roughly accurate, such as H.G. Wells and the use of tanks in military warfare.) In fact, the prequel was written in part because a leading British science fiction author was doubtful of the trilogy's premise, in which three-legged alien Tripod machines take control over most of humanity, and a small group of persons must work to free mankind. How could alien invaders that used searchlights (instead of infrared night-vision) be taken seriously by advanced civilization? (Among other things, the first of the books in the trilogy was written in the late 1960s, when infrared technology was mostly relegated to laboratories.)

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  Rekrul, 28 May 2012 @ 4:25pm

  
  

  Re: Accurate versus inaccurate predictions

  With science fiction, an activity one could do is to compare the predictions that came true to the predictions that haven't happened yet (and, for that matter, technologies that actually came into existence but which were not anticipated in the past by science fiction.)
  
  Science fiction has long predicted the rise of the video phone, but it's only now just starting to sort of catch on with Skype. It has also predicted self-sufficient robots that can walk around the house and do chores, but the most advanced robots we have are really only good for simple tasks like delivering mail. SF tells us that computers will be able to understand spoken commands, but voice recognition still has a long way to go before it can understand much beyond a few key words in a sentence. Cloning and growing replacement organs still doesn't work.
  
  On the other hand, I'm not aware of any SF that accurately predicted the popularity of video games.

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  Michael Ho (profile), 29 May 2012 @ 11:58am

  
  

  Re: Re: Accurate versus inaccurate predictions

  Star Trek predicted a "Google Glasses"+an addictive video game... :P
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is12anYx2Qs

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