Celebrity endorsements have been around for a long time, but it’s usually actors, wrestlers, or athletes who are enduring a photoshoot with a random product. That said, every now and again, it’s a science fiction author who’s promoting something.
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Folio Society’s special editions. They’ve been creating some fantastic books, particularly in the science fiction world. After tackling Frank Herbert’s Dune, Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle and Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, they’ve set their sights on a new…
Syfy’s ambitious miniseries based on Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End served up some beautiful spaceship visuals. Including the alien mothership, which looks striking and angelic. Concept artist Ben Mauro shared with us some of his beautiful Childhood’s End spaceship designs.
Gerard Quinn was one of the great British science fiction artists of the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, working for magazines like New Worlds and Science Fantasy. And even though he left genre art in the mid-60s to go work in advertising, his impact on the genre remained strong.
Syfy’s adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End wrapped up earlier this week, and ended with a stunning glimpse of an alien planet. We’re excited to premiere some concept art by Emmanuel Shiu illuminates that insane vista, exclusively at io9.
Childhood’s End concluded last night with the most surreal of the series’ three installments, “The Children.” We knew from the start that this utopia thing wasn’t going to end well, thanks to Milo’s this-is-the-end opening speech. But the race to the finish is much worse than what anyone on Earth ever imagined.
“It is now the year 2035,” Milo explains at the start of “The Deceivers.” It’s been 19 years since the Overlords rolled in, and four years since the world realized their alien buddies look a lot like Lucifer. Things are going great on Earth... but the price of utopia will soon be revealed.
A fleet of alien ships suddenly appears overhead, carrying a mysterious race of visitors with weirdly benevolent intentions: They’re here to fix all of the world’s problems. Great! So what’s the catch? That’s the set-up for Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End, now a Syfy “event series” that kicks off on Monday.
Syfy is taking on the ambitious task of adapting one of science fiction’s greatest novels for the big screen. But how well with Childhood’s End live up to Arthur C. Clarke’s original vision? And how will they portray the themes of the book? Allow Charles Dance and the rest of the cast to explain, in this exclusive…
Australian book cover designer WH Chong has won numerous awards for his book designs. And speaking to Spook Magazine, he singled out some of his favorite book cover designs for classic science fiction. (Which also happen to be for some of the best books ever written.)
In December, Syfy will broadcast a three-part adaptation of Childhood’s End, the Arthur C. Clarke novel about aliens that come to Earth and correct all of humanity’s mistakes, resulting in a utopian world in which nobody wants for anything ... and curiosity and creativity have all but disappeared.
This video for “Sound & Color” by the Alabama Shakes is just a brilliant tribute to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, including lots of one-point perspective shots and some lovely white corridors. And it has an amazing storyline about an astronaut who wakes from cryogenic sleep to discover an unpleasant truth.
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center recently received a treasure trove: 85 cubic feet of Arthur C. Clarke’s papers, shipped from his home in Sri Lanka. Including a high-school notebook, where the young Clarke rated the science fiction stories he read. And an early draft of Clarke’s 2001:…
Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance) sits front and center for the very first trailer for Syfy’s huge adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous alien invasion book Childhood’s End. This is a big deal, and it absolutely must be done correctly.
The cities of the future are massive, sprawling, beautiful monsters, covering entire coastlines — and in some cases, entire continents. Whether it's Judge Dredd's Mega-Cities or William Gibson's "Sprawl," future cities always devour land. Here's a map of future megalopolises.
Many of science fiction's greatest classics were published as paperback originals — and the genre might never have gotten so much widespread appeal without the cheap paperback format. As a new article in Investor's Business Daily explains, this was the brainchild of publisher Ian Ballantine.
Vintage interviews of Arthur C. Clarke predicting the future of computing continue to surface. Here's one from 1976, just released by the AT&T Tech Channel, which contains even more spot-on description of what communications will look like in the future. As in, today. As in, internet and smartphones and maybe even…
Arthur C. Clarke made it his business to look into the future. And just like the dozens of prognosticators who would come before and after him, he got a few things right and a few things wrong.
All this landing on comets business has got me thinking about the next chapter of space exploration in a totally new way. You can have your Armageddons and Deep Impacts with their Aerosmith soundtracks and Morgan Freeman presidents. What happened today reminded me more of 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
Syfy is making good on their pledge to return to science fiction drama. The studio has plans to adapt the final book in Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey into a miniseries.
