An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Hollywood Reporter: A production company for Blade Runner 2049 has sued (PDF) Tesla, which allegedly fed images from the movie into an artificial intelligence image generator to create unlicensed promotional materials. Alcon Entertainment, in a lawsuit filed Monday in California federal court, accuses Elon Musk and his autonomous vehicle company of misappropriating the movie's brand to promote its robotaxi at a glitzy unveiling earlier this month. The producer says it doesn't want Blade Runner 2049 to be affiliated with Musk because of his "extreme political and social views," pointing to ongoing efforts with potential partners for an upcoming TV series.

The complaint, which brings claims for copyright infringement and false endorsement, also names Warner Bros. Discovery for allegedly facilitating the partnership. "Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk's massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account," states the complaint. "Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk." [...] The lawsuit cites an agreement, the details of which are unknown to Alcon, for Warners to lease or license studio lot space, access and other materials to Tesla for the event. Alcon alleges that the deal included promotional elements allowing Tesla to affiliate its products with WBD movies. WBD was Alcon's domestic distributor for the 2017 release of Blade Runner 2049. It has limited clip licensing rights, though not for Tesla's livestream TV event, the lawsuit claims.

Alcon says it wasn't informed about the brand deal until the day of the unveiling. According to the complaint, Musk communicated to WBD that he wanted to associate the robotaxi with the film. He asked the company for permission to use a still directly from the movie, which prompted an employee to send an emergency request for clearance to Alcon since international rights would be involved, the lawsuit says. The producer refused, spurring the creation of the AI images. [...] Alcon seeks unspecified damages, as well as a court order barring Tesla from further distributing the disputed promotional materials. Musk referenced Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner movie during the robotaxi event. "You know, I love Blade Runner, but I don't know if we want that future," he said. "I believe we want that duster he's wearing, but not the, uh, not the bleak apocalypse."

I, Robot director Alex Proyas also took to X last week, writing: "Hey Elon, Can I have my designs back please?"

An anonymous reader shared this report from ComicBook.com: On Saturday, 20th Century Studios announced that the latest entry in the Alien sci-fi horror franchise will get a limited-edition VHS release on December 3 — just in time for the holidays.

The VHS release of Alien: Romulus is the first such release from a major studio since 2006... a major win for fans of physical media. In recent months, there has been a great bit of conversation surrounding the so-called death of physical media with the rise of digital and streaming with some retailers even having previously announced that they have or will be stopping sales of physical media. But with streaming platforms removing content for various reasons, there's been a rise in appreciation for physical media which has, in turn, resulted in increased sales, particularly when it comes to limited edition items such as Steelbooks [collectible steel-case disc releases]... Given that the Alien: Romulus VHS release is part of an overall celebration of the franchise for its 45th anniversary year, leaning into that nostalgia for feels pretty spot on.
The release will present the movie "in a 4:3 aspect ratio," writes the Verge, "hopefully with well-done pan-and-scan..." (Their post includes a promotional picture showing the "slick, vintage-style" box-cover art.)

"The tape has only the film," notes Gizmodo, "and no special featurette attached at the end, like some used to back in the day."

Gizmodo also reminds readers of Hulu's 2025 series Alien: Earth and an upcoming videogame sequel to 2014's Alien: Isolation.

Neal Stephenson is a sci-fi writer "of exuberant prose who revels in embracing big ideas," according to the New York Times. "With Polostan he enters the realm of the spy novel..."

Or, as the Washington Post puts it, Stephenson "drops readers into a bloody, inspiring, conflict-ridden and pivotal period of the early 20th century." With its flair for characterization, precision of language, witty apercus and fecundity of events, the novel delivers what we've come to cherish from the author of such fantastical classics as "The Diamond Age," "Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon."

But the book is also utterly unlike the majority of Stephenson's work. For one thing, it's short — a far cry from the maximalist "systems novels" that cram in entire worlds with complex interacting power structures, both explicit and hidden. "Polostan" is also devoid of fantastical elements and farcical "hysterical realism," which comes as a bit of a shock given that this is the writer who invented Mafia pizza-delivery guys and cybernetic children's primers. The structure of the book is, likewise, unusually straightforward: a mainly linear narrative dispersed along two timelines...

These observations aren't quibbles so much as alerts to the reader that this is new territory for Stephenson — and good for him! Though, because Polostan is the first novel in a planned historical series titled Bomb Light, which aims to capture the excitement and intrigue of the nuclear arms race, we cannot rule out any Stephenson freakiness down the line... Assuming the subsequent books are as good as this one, Stephenson might end up with a series that rivals Michael Moorcock's Pyat Quartet and Edward Whittemore's Jerusalem Quartet as a vivid and canny dissection of a century unlike any other.
"Much of the next volume is already written," Stephenson says on Substack, calling it "a project that has been in the works for over ten years". (He also notes that among his novels, "even the stuff that's branded as science fiction tends to contain a lot of history.")

Meanwhile in August, Stephenson's blockchain-tech startup Lamina1 announced a collaboration with special effects company Weta Workshop (from "The Lord of the Rings" film franchise) on a "participatory worldbuilding" experience. Variety reports: The experience is expected to offer "a new blueprint for IP expansion through immersive experiences that incorporate fan action and input."

Per Lamina1's description for the project, "Stephenson and the Weta team will begin engaging a global community of creators and fans on the Lamina1 platform this fall, inviting them to unravel the lore behind a mysterious set of 'Artefacts' that will build upon the themes and lore from Stephenson's critically-acclaimed catalog of work.

Next, the superfan will take on the new role of creator, utilizing their discoveries to contribute directly to the expansion of the universe."

"Artefact" will serve as the flagship project in the Lamina1-Weta partnership and first major multimedia property launching on Lamina1's blockchain infrastructure and tooling.
Neal Stephenson answered questions from Slashdot's readers in 2004. Now to promote his new novel Polostan, Stephenson will be making several personal appearances this week:

• At the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison (Sunday at noon)
• Chicago's Book Stall (Monday at 7 p.m.)
• A Cary, North Carolina Barnes & Noble (Tuesday at 6 p.m.)
• New York City's Strand (Wednesday at 7 p.m.)
• At the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (Thursday at 7 p.m.)
• Ames, Iowa at Dog Eared Books (Sunday at 6 p.m.)

"It's going to be violent," warns the creator of Terminator Zero, an eight-episode anime series premiering Thursday August 29th on Netflix. "It's going to be dark, it's going to be horrific, and it's going to be arresting."

And the Netflix blog has now shared the first six minutes online: In the world of Terminator, the future is never set, yet some things are guaranteed: The Terminator is still a cyborg that feels no remorse, pity, or fear. The anime series TERMINATOR ZERO, landing on Netflix on Aug. 29 — known to fans as Judgment Day — looks different from any incarnation of the Terminator franchise we've seen before, but you can tell from these opening six minutes that the brutal, sophisticated action will remain.

"I realized the first minutes of the show have to declare what it is," creator and executive producer Mattson Tomlin tells Tudum. A joint production between Skydance and the Japanese animation studio Production I.G, TERMINATOR ZERO has the challenge of drawing in both anime fans and fans of the Terminator series. "The way to do that was to have a sequence that had no dialogue, that was really planting a flag in letting everybody know this is going to be violent, it's going to be dark, it's going to be action-driven, it's going to be horrific, and it's going to be arresting," says Tomlin, who previously wrote Project Power for Netflix and is currently writing The Batman Part II. "That's just what it has to be."
The series follows "a new batch of characters who live in Japan in 1997," writes CBR — and in an interview the show's director said "There's a balance" when representing Japan's actual culture while keeping the show futuristic: One of the things that I really took for granted was guns. [Points to self] Dumb American over here had to write a scene where Eiko gets into a parking lot and smashes the window of a car, goes to the glove box, takes out a revolver, and it instantly gets flagged. [Other people working on the series] were like, "No, we don't have guns. What you are describing, that's over there. We're over here in civilization where that can't happen." That triggered a really fruitful and creatively challenging discussion about weapons. The military has guns and the police have guns. That's kind of it. So these characters have to arm themselves. How are they going to do it? What could we do? And that's why the Terminator has a crossbow. Eiko has all of these different weapons that she concocted from a hardware store. It was all born out of that.

Alien: Romulus director Fede Ãlvarez "briefly dropped into an Alien franchise subreddit this week to chat with fans about his new sequel," reports Deadline. "But the moderators weren't having it, flagging Ãlvarez as an imposter in a notice that he is 'permanently banned' from the subreddit." The moderator shared an update that Ãlvarez "was immediately reinstated and had a very friendly conversation with us. Awesome guy." They also shared the filmmaker's response. "I'm sorry, just found it hilarious," wrote Ãlvarez. "My bad. Not harm done. Thanks again for such great work moderating my favorite subreddit."
Fangoria notes this might not be the last Alien movie from director Alvarez: Talking with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week, the Evil Dead and Don't Breathe director teased that ideas are in the pipeline for an Alien: Romulus sequel, which would — if it comes to fruition — be the eighth instalment in the legendary sci-fi horror franchise."
The Hollywood Reporter also notes that Ash, the "calculating synthetic character" from the original 1979 movie Alien (played by the late Ian Holm) got a kind of reprise in 2024 with another character named Rook: According to Ãlvarez, Rook was a collaborative decision with [Ridley] Scott, who also wanted to see another version of the artificial person he introduced 45 years ago. The Romulus team then received approval from Holm's estate, and using the English actor's headcast from The Lord of the Rings as a foundation, Legacy Effects built Rook's torso and head as an animatronic. The practical character was then enhanced by CG and deepfake AI technology for certain shots as needed... "There might be some deepfake in the eyes because it's the best when it comes to creating the likeness of the eyes, but it's a whole bag of tricks from 1970s and 1980s technology to technology from yesterday."
The article also notes one horrifying plot twist "received some respectful opposition to this unsettling choice from 20th Century and Disney, but that's precisely when [director Alvarez] knew he was on the right course." "If you're given an Alien movie by a corporation that is owned by Disney and they immediately say, 'Yeah, let's make it,' then you are failing somehow. So we really pushed it to the limit, and I'm glad we did."
Alvarez's social media feed also explores what Alien: Romulus would look like as trading cards or as 1950s comic book, shares posts from the movie's poster designer, and admits that "everything I do is influenced by Terminator / Alien / Predator."

Lionsgate is recalling its latest trailer for Francis Ford Coppola's epic "Megalopolis," which featured a littany of fabricated quotes from famous film critics. From a report: "Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for 'Megalopolis,'" a Lionsgate spokesperson said in a statement provided to Variety. "We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry."

The trailer, released on Wednesday morning, aimed to position Coppola's latest film as a work of art that would withstand the test of time, much like his previous masterpieces "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now." The video included several quotes from critics panning Coppola's previous work -- but none of the phrases, attributed to the likes of Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, could be found in any of their reviews.

In the 1980s, a radio show about home computers was broadcast on a handful of California radio stations. 40 years later, reel-to-reel tapes of the shows were re-discovered — and digitized — by an Internet Archive special collections manager.

An Internet Archive blog post tells the story: Earlier this year archivist Kay Savetz recovered several of the tapes in a property sale, and recognizing their value and worthiness of professional transfer, launched a GoFundMe to have them digitized, and made them available at Internet Archive with the permission of the show's creators...

Interviews in the recovered recordings include Timothy Leary, Douglas Adams, Bill Gates, Atari's Jack Tramiel, Apple's Bill Atkinson, and dozens of others. The recovered shows span November 17 1984 through July 12, 1985.

Many more of the original reel-to-reel tapes — including shows with interviews with Ray Bradbury, Robert Moog, Donny Osmond, and Gene Roddenberry — are still lost, and perhaps are still waiting to be found in the Los Angeles area. [Though there appears to be a transcript of the Gene Roddenberry interview.]

The stories of how The Famous Computer Cafe was created — and saved, 40 years later — is explored in an episode of the Radio Survivor podcast. The podcast interviewed show co-creator Ellen Fields and archivist Kay Savetz, providing a dual perspective of how the show was created and how it was recovered.

The recovery of these interviews, 40 years after their original airing, holds out hope that many more relics and treasures still await discovery.
You get another perspective on the past from the show's advertisements for 1980s software (and from the production values of 1980s-era radio technology).

Bill Gates was just 29 when he recorded his interview. And Douglas Adams was 32.

Slashdot reader Dave Knott writes: After once again being plagued by controversy, this time due to a thwarted ballot-stuffing campaign, the 2024 Hugo Awards have been awarded at the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention.

This year's winners are:

* Best Novel: Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh
* Best Novella: Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher
* Best Novelette: "The Year Without Sunshine", by Naomi Kritzer
* Best Short Story: "Better Living Through Algorithms", by Naomi Kritzer
* Best Series: Imperial Radch, by Ann Leckie
* Best Graphic Story or Comic: Saga, Vol. 11, written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Fiona Staples
* Best Related Work: A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
* Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: The Last of Us: "Long, Long Time", written by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, directed by Peter Hoar
* Best Game or Interactive Work: Baldur's Gate 3, produced by Larian Studios
* Best Editor Short Form: Neil Clarke
* Best Editor Long Form: Ruoxi Chen
* Best Professional Artist: Rovina Cai
* Best Semiprozine: Strange Horizons, by the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective
* Best Fanzine: Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, editors Roseanna Pendlebury, Arturo Serrano, Paul Weimer; senior editors Joe Sherry, Adri Joy, G. Brown, Vance Kotrla
* Best Fancast: Octothorpe, by John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty
* Best Fan Writer: Paul Weimer
* Best Fan Artist: Laya Rose
* Lodestar Award for Best YA Book: To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose
* Astounding Award for Best New Writer: Xiran Jay Zhao

In his new memoir, Imminent, former senior intelligence official Luis Elizondo claims that a supersecret program has been retrieving technology and biological remains of nonhuman origin for decades, warning that these phenomena could pose a serious national security threat or even an existential threat to humanity. The New York Times reports: Luis Elizondo made headlines in 2017 when he resigned as a senior intelligence official running a shadowy Pentagon program investigating U.F.O.s and publicly denounced the excessive secrecy, lack of resources and internal opposition that he said were thwarting the effort. Elizondo's disclosures at the time created a sensation. They were buttressed by explosive videos and testimony from Navy pilots who had encountered unexplained aerial phenomena, and led to congressional inquiries, legislation and a 2023 House hearing in which a former U.S. intelligence official testified that the federal government has retrieved crashed objects of nonhuman origin.

Now Elizondo, 52, has gone further in a new memoir. In the book he asserted that a decades-long U.F.O. crash retrieval program has been operating as a supersecret umbrella group made up of government officials working with defense and aerospace contractors. Over the years, he wrote, technology and biological remains of nonhuman origin have been retrieved from these crashes. "Humanity is, in fact, not the only intelligent life in the universe, and not the alpha species," Elizondo wrote. The book, "Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for U.F.O.s," is being published by HarperCollins on Aug. 20 after a yearlong security review by the Pentagon.

As Comic-Con hits San Diego, "part of the big news in 2024 is that the con won't have a corresponding virtual or online event this year," according to Polygon, "for the first time since 2019."

But there's still some big scifi media news, according to CNET's Comic-Con coverage: Disney revealed a new Doctor Who addition to the franchise that will jump back to the 1970s with the Sea Devils, an ancient group of beings who arise from the sea. Made in partnership with the BBC, the series... will air on Disney Plus, where fans can currently stream season 14 of Doctor Who starring Ncuti Gatwa.
And there's also an upcoming Doctor Who Christmas special.

Meanwhile, Saturday night, USA Today ran a special article with late-breaking announcements about Marvel's Cinematic Universe: Marvel has already won Comic-Con, with a raucous screening of "Deadpool & Wolverine" followed by a high-tech drone show, and the box office, with the new movie on track to have one of the best openings of all time... Robert Downey Jr. returns to the MCU as Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday. Kevin Feige says the Fantastic Four will be in the next two Avengers movies... And here comes the Fantastic Four [movie] a year from now. It starts filming Tuesday in the UK...
The article says Marvel's Fantastic Four presentation included "a Fantasti-Car that hovers across the stage — and that castmembers also appeared from the upcoming Thunderbolts* movie.

More geeky news:

• Amazon Prime showed a new four-minute trailer with clips from season two of its J.R.R. Tolkein prequel, "The Rings of Power". (And there was also a three-minute blooper reel for Season 4 of Prime's superhero-themed series, "The Boys".)

• Paramount+ showed a trailer for the Star Trek universe's first streaming movie, Section 31. There was also a trailer for season 5 of the animated comedy Star Trek: Lower Decks — plus a particularly strange clip from the fourth season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

• Keanu Reeves accepted the Inkpot award for his contribution to the world of film and comics — partly because since 2021 Reeves has been co-authoring a Kickstarter-funded comic book called BRZRKR. (Netflix plans to adapt it into a movie.)

• Next February will see the release of Captain America: Brave New World, in which the Incredible Hulk may get some competition from Harrison Ford, who's been cast as the Red Hulk.

But things got a little too real Friday when a fire at a nearby steakhouse forced the evacuation of the immersive "Penguin Lounge" — which was promoting Max's new prequel series to 2022's movie The Batman.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The prestigious Hugo awards for science fiction and fantasy writing has revealed that almost 400 votes -- about 10% of all votes cast in this year's awards -- were fraudulently paid for to help one finalist win. The Hugo administration subcommittee, which tallies the votes for the annual awards, issued a statement on Monday saying that they had determined that 377 votes had been cast by individuals with "obvious fake names and/or other disqualifying characteristics." These included voters with almost identical surnames, with just one letter changed and placed in alphabetical order, and some whose names were "translations of consecutive numbers."

The voting pattern was "startlingly and obviously different" to anything the members of the current Hugo administration subcommittee had ever seen, and most of the votes favored one finalist, who the subcommittee called "Finalist A." "We have no evidence that Finalist A was at all aware of the fraudulent votes being cast for them, let alone in any way responsible for the operation. We are therefore not identifying them," the subcommittee said. Only members of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) can nominate works for the Hugos and vote on finalists, which costs a minimum of 45 pounds each year. Based on the Hugo administration subcommittee's tally, paying for 377 memberships would have cost at least $22,000. The Hugo administration subcommittee said they received "a confidential report that at least one person had sponsored the purchase of WSFS memberships by large numbers of individuals, who were refunded the cost of membership after confirming that they had voted as the sponsor wished." The subcommittee said the finalist has not been disqualified but didn't win their category without the invalid votes.

"We want to reassure 2024 Hugo voters that the ballots cast were counted fairly," their statement said. "Most of all, we want to assure the winners of this year's Hugos that they have won fair and square, without any arbitrary or unexplained exclusion of votes or nominees and without any possibility that their award had been gained through fraudulent means."

In February, the Hugo awards came under fire over censorship accusations that it was excluding several authors at its event in China.

Robin McKie writes via The Guardian: Scientists with Breakthrough Listen, the world's largest scientific research program dedicated to finding alien civilizations, say a host of technological developments are about to transform the search for intelligent life in the cosmos. These innovations will be outlined at the group's annual conference, which is to be held in the UK for the first time, in Oxford, this week. Several hundred scientists, from astronomers to zoologists, are expected to attend. "There are amazing technologies that are under development, such as the construction of huge new telescopes in Chile, Africa and Australia, as well as developments in AI," said astronomer Steve Croft, a project scientist with Breakthrough Listen. "They are going to transform how we look for alien civilizations."

Among these new instruments are the Square Kilometer Array, made up of hundreds of radio telescopes now being built in South Africa and Australia, and the Vera Rubin Observatory that is being constructed in Chile. The former will become the world's most powerful radio astronomy facility while the latter, the world's largest camera, will be able to image the entire visible sky every three or four nights, and is expected to help discover millions of new galaxies and stars. Both facilities are set to start observations in the next few years and both will provide data for Breakthrough Listen. Using AI to analyze these vast streams of information for subtle patterns that would reveal evidence of intelligent life will give added power to the search for alien civilizations, added Croft.

"Until now, we have been restricted to looking for signals deliberately sent out by aliens to advertise their existence. The new techniques are going to be so sensitive that, for the first time, we will be able to detect unintentional transmissions as opposed to deliberate ones and will be able to spot alien airport radar, or powerful TV transmitters -- things like that." [...] Croft remains optimistic that we will soon succeed in making contact. "We know that the conditions for life are everywhere, we know that the ingredients for life are everywhere. I think it would be deeply weird if it turned out we were the only inhabited planet in the galaxy or in the universe. But you know, it's possible."

It's been adapted into a graphic novel, a videogame, a radio play, and an opera, according to Wikipedia — which also describes years of trying to adapt Neuromancer into a movie. "The landmark 1984 cyberpunk novel has been on Hollywood's wishlist for decades," writes Gizmodo, "with multiple filmmakers attempting to bring it to the big screen." (Back in 2010, Slashdot's CmdrTaco even posted an update with the headline "Neuromancer Movie In Your Future?" with a 2011 story promising the movie deal was "moving forward....")

But now Deadline reports it's becoming a 10-episode series on Apple TV+ (co-produced by Apple Studios) starring Callum Turner and Brianna Middleton: Created for television by Graham Roland and JD Dillard, Neuromancer follows a damaged, top-rung super-hacker named Case (Turner) who is thrust into a web of digital espionage and high stakes crime with his partner Molly (Middleton), a razor-girl assassin with mirrored eyes, aiming to pull a heist on a corporate dynasty with untold secrets.
More from Gizmodo: "We're incredibly excited to be bringing this iconic property to Apple TV+," Roland and Dillard said in a statement. "Since we became friends nearly 10 years ago, we've looked for something to team up on, so this collaboration marks a dream come true. Neuromancer has inspired so much of the science fiction that's come after it and we're looking forward to bringing television audiences into Gibson's definitive 'cyberpunk' world."
The novel launched Gibson's "Sprawl" trilogy of novels (building on the dystopia in his 1982 short story "Burning Chrome"), also resurrecting the "Molly Millions" character from Johnny Mnemonic — an even earlier short story from 1981...

The Roddenberry Foundation — named for Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry — "announced Tuesday that this year's biennial award would focus on artificial intelligence that benefits humanity," reports the Los Angeles Times: Lior Ipp, chief executive of the foundation, told The Times there's a growing recognition that AI is becoming more ubiquitous and will affect all aspects of our lives. "We are trying to ... catalyze folks to think about what AI looks like if it's used for good," Ipp said, "and what it means to use AI responsibly, ethically and toward solving some of the thorny global challenges that exist in the world...."

Ipp said the foundation shares the broad concern about AI and sees the award as a means to potentially contribute to creating those guardrails... Inspiration for the theme was also borne out of the applications the foundation received last time around. Ipp said the prize, which is "issue-agnostic" but focused on early-stage tech, produced compelling uses of AI and machine learning in agriculture, healthcare, biotech and education. "So," he said, "we sort of decided to double down this year on specifically AI and machine learning...."

Though the foundation isn't prioritizing a particular issue, the application states that it is looking for ideas that have the potential to push the needle on one or more of the United Nations' 17 sustainable development goals, which include eliminating poverty and hunger as well as boosting climate action and protecting life on land and underwater.
The Foundation's most recent winner was Sweden-based Elypta, according to the article, "which Ipp said is using liquid biopsies, such as a blood test, to detect cancer early."

"We believe that building a better future requires a spirit of curiosity, a willingness to push boundaries, and the courage to think big," said Rod Roddenberry, co-founder of the Roddenberry Foundation. "The Prize will provide a significant boost to AI pioneers leading these efforts." According to the Foundation's announcement, the Prize "embodies the Roddenberry philosophy's promise of a future in which technology and human ingenuity enable everyone — regardless of background — to thrive."

"By empowering entrepreneurs to dream bigger and innovate valiantly, the Roddenberry Prize seeks to catalyze the development of AI solutions that promote abundance and well-being for all."

Space.com calls it a movie "adding more combustible material to the inferno of AI unease sweeping the globe." Its director tells them James Cameron was a huge inspiration, saying Atlas "has an Aliens-like vibe because of the grounded, grittiness to it." (You can watch the movie's trailer here...)

But Tom's Guide says "the reviews are just as shocking as the movie's AI." Its "audience score" on Rotten Tomatoes is 55% — but its aggregate score from professional film critics is 16%. The Hollywood Reporter called it "another Netflix movie to half-watch while doing laundry." ("The star plays a data analyst forced to team up with an AI robot in order to prevent an apocalypse orchestrated by a different AI robot...") The site Giant Freakin Robot says "there seems to be a direct correlation between how much money the streaming platform spends on green screen effects and how bad the movie is" (noting the film's rumored budget of $100 million)...

But Tom's Guide defends it as a big-budget sci-fi thriller that "has an interesting premise that makes you think about the potential dangers of AI progression." Our world has always been interested in computers and machines, and the very idea of technology turning against us is unsettling. That's why "Atlas" works as a movie, but professional critics have other things to say. Ross McIndoe from Slant Magazine said: "Atlas seems like a story that should have been experienced with a gamepad in hand...." Todd Gilchrist from Variety didn't enjoy the conventional structure that "Atlas" followed...

However, even though the score is low and the reviews are pretty negative, I don't want to completely bash this movie... If I'm being completely honest, most movies and TV shows nowadays are taken too seriously. The more general blockbusters are supposed to be entertaining and fun, with visually pleasing effects that keep you hooked on the action. This is much like "Atlas", which is a fun watch with an unsettling undertone focused on the dangers of evolving AI...

Being part of the audience, we're supposed to just take it in and enjoy the movie as a casual viewer. This is why I think you should give "Atlas" a chance, especially if you're big into dramatic action sequences and have enjoyed movies like "Terminator" and "Pacific Rim".

Police officers in Britain could be armed with Ghostbusters-style devices that fire electromagnetic rays to shut down the engines of ebikes being used in a crime. From a report: Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC), said the weapon was in development and could be months away from being available, though it is expected to be longer than that. He said it would be housed in a backpack, reminiscent of the equipment used in the Ghostbusters series of movies. It could tackle crime linked to newer vehicles such as electric bikes and electric scooters.

The device is being developed with the Defence Science and Technology Lab, which is overseen by the Ministry of Defence, alongside other technological innovations that British police are hoping to use. It would fire an electromagnetic pulse at a vehicle that an officer wants to stop because the rider is suspected of involvement in a crime. The electromagnetic weapon works by tricking the engine into thinking it is overheating, which shuts down the engine and brings the vehicle to a stop. It requires a line of sight to work, Stephens said.

Stephens told a media briefing: "Basically, it interferes with the electric motor, to trick the electric motor into thinking it is overheating. It sends a signal to confuse the electric motor. All these electric motors apparently have an inbuilt safety system that if it thinks it's overheating, it shuts down. At the minute, it's like a ginormous backpack." The equipment was demonstrated to police leaders at the Farnborough technology show earlier this year. Stephens said: "They were also telling me it has the potential to be useful with normal combustion engine vehicles."

This year's Free Comic Book Day coincided with Star Wars Day. So there's two new free Star Wars titles being handed out today in comic shops around the world.

They're among several geek-friendly titles among the 48 free comics that fans will get to choose from during this once-a-year event, including:

- Street Fighter vs Final Fight
- Jonny Quest
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Conan the Barbarian
- Flash Gordon

And, of course, four from Marvel Comics.

More details from IGN: DC is about to kick off Absolute Power, a major crossover event that involves Amanda Waller teaming with Batman's rogue android Failsafe and the Brainiac Queen to drain the world's heroes of their power. This prologue issue serves as a primer for the event...

Alongside their Conan issue, Titan is also releasing a new Doctor Who comic that has the distinction of being the first story to feature Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor...

Robert Kirkman's Skybound has been busy establishing a new shared Energon Universe, one which comprises Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici's Void Rivals as well as the Transformers and G.I. Joe franchises... This issue features new stories for all three series and is designed to be an easy gateway into this rapidly growing comic book line.
There's a Stranger Things story, an Archie Horror comic, and the story of how Popeye lost his eye.

The event is designed to help the industry by attracting comic book readers to independent comic book stores -- and in 2017 NPR offered this advice for visiting comics fans. "While you're there, buy something... The comics shops still have to pay for the 'free' FCBD books they stock, and they're counting on the increased foot traffic to lift sales."

Disneyland is a proposing part of its park be dedicated to James Cameron's Avatar, reports SFGate. "The rendering isn't a carbon copy of the Pandora land in Disney World's Animal Kingdom; instead, it's themed more closely to the recent sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water." The teaser was dropped as part of Wednesday's company shareholders meeting. The concept art shows a large lake in the middle of the land, surrounded by the signature floating mountains that loom over Animal Kingdom's Pandora. Boats filled with guests can be seen in the water, suggesting some sort of ride. No attractions have been announced for the land yet. Animal Kingdom has two: the spectacular flight simulator Flight of Passage and bucolic indoor boat ride Na'vi River Journey...

There's no timeline for construction to begin. Disney officials have consistently referred to it as a "potential" project, often calling it an "experience" rather than a land.

An anonymous reader writes: Variety reports that following the massive box office success of Dune: Part Two, Legendary has tapped Denis Villeneuve for a third installment that would presumably continue the story of how Paul Atreides goes on to conquer the galaxy. Earlier this year, Villeneuve told Empire that he had already "put words on paper" thinking about where he would like to take the Dune franchise going forward. Legendary has yet to announce any sort of timeline for when production on Dune 3 might begin. But the studio intends for the movie to debut before its next project with Villeneuve -- an adaptation of Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen's 2024 Pulitzer Prize-nominated nonfiction book about how nuclear war scenarios would likely play out.

An anonymous reader writes: In the early 70s, young filmmakers John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon created a spaceship tale for a graduation project -- little knowing it would influence Alien and many other works. Made for $60,000 by film school students, horror maestro John Carpenter's directorial debut Dark Star is now regarded as a sci-fi cult classic. Having just turned 50 years old, it's a world away from much of the sci-fi that came before it and would come after, neither space odyssey nor space opera, rather a bleak, downbeat and often absurd portrait of a group of people cooped together in a malfunctioning interstellar tin can. Arguably its most famous scene consists of an existential debate between an astronaut and a sentient bomb. Dark Star was a collaboration between Carpenter, who directed and scored the film, and Dan O'Bannon, who in addition to co-writing the script, acted as editor, production designer, and visual effects supervisor, as well as playing the volatile, paranoid Sergeant Pinback. They met as budding filmmakers at the University of Southern California. "While [Carpenter and O'Bannon] couldn't be more dissimilar in personality, they were both very energetic and focused," says Daniel Griffiths, director of Let There Be Light: The Odyssey of Dark Star (2010), the definitive documentary about the making of the film.

The sci-fi films of this period tended to be bleak and dystopian, explains John Kenneth Muir, author of The Films of John Carpenter -- films like Silent Running (1972), in which all plant life on Earth is extinct, or George Lucas's 1971 debut THX-1138, in which human emotion is suppressed. "Dark Star arrived in this world of dark, hopeless imaginings, but took the darkness one step further into absurd nihilism." Carpenter and O'Bannon set out to make the "ultimate riff on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey," says Griffiths. While Kubrick's 1968 film, explains Muir, was one "in which viewers sought meaning in the stars about the nature of humanity, there is no meaning to life in Dark Star". Rather, says Muir, it parodies 2001 "with its own sense of man's irrelevance in the scheme of things". Where Kubrick scored his film with classical music, Dark Star opens with a country song, Benson, Arizona. (A road in the real-life Benson is named in honor of the film). The film was even released with the tagline "the spaced-out odyssey." Dark Star captured the mood of the time in which it was made, says Muir, the atmosphere of Nixon's America. "The 1960s was all about utopian dreaming and bringing change to America in the counterculture. The 1970s represent what writer Johnny Byrne called 'The wake-up from the hippie dream', a reckoning with the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same." [...]

When Dark Star premiered at the FILMEX expo in 1974, the audience response was largely positive. "They recognized the film's absurdist humor and celebrated its student film roots," says Griffiths. It had a limited theatrical release in 1975, but it was not a commercial success. "The film met with negative reviews from critics, and general disinterest from audiences," says Muir. "Both Carpenter and O'Bannon realized that all the struggles they endured to make the film did not matter to audiences, they only cared about the finished product. I think they were discouraged," says Griffiths. The growth of the VHS market, however, helped it find its audience and propelled it towards cult status. Its influence can still be felt, perhaps most directly in Ridley Scott's Alien, for which O'Bannon, who died in 2009, wrote the screenplay. The two films share DNA. Alien is also set on a grotty working vessel with a bickering crew, only this time the alien wasn't played for laughs.