Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!
This is it! Isaac Asimov’s Foundation will finally make it to visual media. After the rights passing through a few hands, they’ve finally made their way to HBO. Check out the entire article at The Wrap where Jonah Nolan talks about the new project. I’ll definitely keeping tabs on the development. No dates were given, so I’ll try to hold back most of my excitement until I hear more.
I was a bit torn when I heard that the first installment of the new CGI Clone Wars TV series would be released in theaters. My first thought was that George Lucas was trying to milk Star Wars fans for even more money. I’d like to think of myself as a pretty loyal Star Wars fan, but to a point. Let me give you a little background on my Star Wars movie collection before I move on to the review.
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Sorry everyone for being MIA for the past few months. I have been having a very hard time dedicating time to this site since the birth of my new baby girl! Anyway, last week my wife and I found some time to watch the new Blood and Chrome web series on YouTube. Overall I think the acting, special effects, and plot are pretty good. I am glad to see that they didn’t try to make everything seem old. One thing that I found very annoying was the overuse of lens flare. I am pretty sure it was to hide the fact that there really weren’t any big sets to film on. Blood and Chrome is being released free on Youtube, then will air on SyFy then on Bluray, DVD, and digital download early next year.
I personally would have rather waited until all the episodes (~12 minutes each) were out, however my wife refused. I think it might be possible she’s a bigger BSG fan than I am. That’s saying a lot! If you are a big BSG fan like myself, you need to check it out.
One thing I like about this book is there is a nice eight page synopsis of the whole Robot City series. Even after just reading the series, it was a nice refresher for the events leading up to Robots and Aliens. This new series involves Asimov’s challenge to the authors to describe what might happen if robots encountered an alien species. How would they treat them? How would the Three Laws apply?
I particularly enjoyed this first book because it addresses one of the main questions I had regarding the Three Laws of Robotics. What does the key phrase “human being” actually mean? Throughout Asimov’s books and it is explained that the laws aren’t as simple as the English translation. They are complicated sets of positronic potentials that govern every action of a robot.
In Changeling, Stephen Leigh describes a robot model that is given a very simple definition of “intelligent life form” as an equivalent. This idea seems to work very well in this book and after several chapters we see how this experiment intersects with the Robot City plotlines. Also, we get to see Derec use the powers he was given to control Robot City. One thing that did bug me a little bit was how little of the main plotlines was advanced.