An Injection of Hard Science Boosts TV Shows' Prognosis:
It's no fiction: Scientific fact has usurped science fiction as TV's favorite inspiration for prime-time story lines. And to keep everything on the up and up, show writers and producers are hiring scores of researchers and technical consultants to get the science straight.
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There's a slick new online Sci Fi rag called Lightspeed. I like this one because they also publish nonfiction pieces that are relevant to their fiction stories.
Last Friday I went to at talk by Brian David Johnson from Intel. That sentence sounds like any other that an academic could write--always with the going to seminars we acahacks are.
"The British are sniffy about sci-fi, but there is nothing artificial in its ability to convey apprehension about the universe and ourselves."
Cat and Girl offers a smashing take on facts and fiction. An excerpt from Spoiler Alert:
Perfectly consistent with the recent chopping of science reporting from many TV stations - like CNN. Well, about as consistent with reality as any non-Schneier article in Wired .
There have indeed several occasions in television history in which science has been well represented. Examples are Bronowski's "Ascent of Man", Sagan's "Cosmos" or the Mr. Wizard series.
Alas, these venerable series reside only in the ancient past. Even "Nova" on PBS today is only a pale imitation of itself, looking more like a recruiting commercial more suited to the Military Channel.