PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from CNN: Over 300,000 people have signed on to a Facebook event pledging to raid Area 51 in Nevada in a quest to "see them aliens." The event, titled "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," is inviting users from around the world to join a "Naruto run" -- a Japanese manga-inspired running style featuring arms outstretched backwards and heads forward -- into the area. "We can move faster than their bullets," the event page, which is clearly written with tongue in cheek, promises those who RSVP for September 20. The mysterious Area 51 has been the focus of conspiracy theories for decades, and many people think it's where the U.S. government stores its secrets about aliens and UFOs.

Esther Schindler (Slashdot reader #16,185) shared this story from Hewlett Packard's Enterprise blog: Storage is a staple of both science and science fiction, and forms the basis, or a crucial component, of many a piece of speculative fiction... [H]ere are eight past visions of the storage future that either passed their error checks or succumbed to bit rot.

Why store vast quantities of data on a device when you can just slap it into someone's head?
The article acknowledges that in many science fiction stories, data is simply preserved using such primitive technologies as "the written word" and "brute-force [human] memory," as well as ordinary real-world storage technologies like the server room in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, or basic non-cloud-based computers. But there's also wetware -- think "Johnny Mnemonic "-- and the data crystals in Babylon Five.

The article even acknowledges that time Batman beat Mr. Freeze by carving binary code into a wall, giving future generations the recipe for antifreeze.

The long wait is over for sci-fi and horror film buffs: the 1979 classic "Alien" will be released in 4K and HDR for the film's 40th anniversary. The remaster will be available on an UltraHD Blu-ray disc. From a report: 20th Century Fox and partners embarked on an effort to remaster the film in 4K last year, under supervision by Pam Dery and Director Ridley Scott. "Alien" was originally shot on 35mm film, and the remaster was made using the original negative. Remastering older films for the UltraHD era has sometimes proven challenging for studios. In many cases, original film masters have degraded, and 4K on a 65-inch TV is adept at revealing graininess and other flaws that result from aged or damaged film.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via NPR: Netflix announced this week that it has acquired the rights to stream Chinese sci-fi blockbuster "The Wandering Earth," which has already grossed more than $600 million globally and hit number two in the all-time Chinese box office rankings since it was released in theaters Feb. 5. Netflix will translate the movie into 28 languages and release it in more than 190 countries. The movie, based on a short story by Hugo award winner Liu Cixin (author of "Three Body Problem" and "Ball Lighting") is set in a distant future in which the earth is about to be devoured by the sun. Using propulsive engines, humans turn earth into a spaceship and try to launch it out of the solar system and the planet is saved by a Chinese hero (rather than American ones as typically seen in Hollywood sci-fi movies.)

For China's film industry, the release marks a major milestone. "Filmmakers in China see science fiction as a holy grail," Raymond Zhou, an independent critic, told The New York Times. "It's like the coming-of-age of the industry." Two sci-fi movies, "The Wandering Earth" and "Crazy Alien," which is also inspired by Liu's work, topped this Chinese New Year movie season. Inkoo Kang wrote at Slate that the film "understands what American blockbusters are still loath to admit: Responding to climate change will pose infrastructural challenges on a massive order and require drastic measures on a planetary scale. Perhaps it takes a country like China, which is accustomed to a manic rate of construction and grandness of organizational possibility, to seriously consider how dramatically humanity will have to reimagine our ways of life to survive such a catastrophic force."

beaverdownunder quotes Paleotronic: While researching for our magazine we sometimes find nuggets buried by time that have been forgotten by the Internet. This particular nugget was found in the May 1977 issue of Creative Computing. Science fiction author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke's predictions of the future are fascinating, both for what he got right, and what he got wrong.
Quoting Arthur C. Clarke: [W]hat about verbal inputs? Do we really need a keyboard? I'm sure the answer is "Yes." We want to be able to type out messages, look at them, and edit them before transmission. We need keyboard inputs for privacy, and quietness. A reliable voice recognition system, capable of coping with accents, hangovers, ill-fitting dentures and the "human error" that my late friend HAL, the computer from 2001, complained about, represents something many orders of magnitude more complex than a simple alpha-numeric keyboard. It would be a device with capabilities, in a limited area, at least as good as those of a human brain. Yet assuming that the curves of the last few decades can be extrapolated, this will certainly be available sometime in the next century....
Noting that he coined the phrase "Don't commute -- communicate!" Clark adds "We are already approaching the point when it will be feasible -- not necessarily desirable -- for those engaged in what is quaintly called "white-collar" jobs to do perhaps 95 per cent of their work without leaving home. Of course, few of today's families could survive this, but for the moment let's confine ourselves to electronic, not social, technology."

But he wasn't excited about the possibility of telepathy in the future. "I find that my mental processes are so incoherent...that I should be very sorry for anyone at the receiving end."

AmiMoJo quotes the BBC: The next series of Doctor Who won't start until 2020, it's been confirmed. Series 11 ended on Sunday night, but after the festive special on New Year's Day, Jodie Whittaker won't be seen in the Tardis again next year.

Showrunner Chris Chibnall said work on the new series had already begun... The first episode of the series, the first to feature a female Doctor, drew a record audience. It saw the highest launch viewing figures for the sci-fi stalwart in a decade, with 10.9 million people tuning in. The series has been considered a ratings success, with viewing figures above those of the last two series when Peter Capaldi starred in the title role.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Sitting in front of a Converus EyeDetect station, it's impossible not to think of Blade Runner. In the 1982 sci-fi classic, Harrison Ford's rumpled detective identifies artificial humans using a steam-punk Voight-Kampff device that watches their eyes while they answer surreal questions. EyeDetect's questions are less philosophical, and the penalty for failure is less fatal (Ford's character would whip out a gun and shoot). But the basic idea is the same: By capturing imperceptible changes in a participant's eyes -- measuring things like pupil dilation and reaction time -- the device aims to sort deceptive humanoids from genuine ones.

It claims to be, in short, a next-generation lie detector. Polygraph tests are a $2 billion industry in the US and, despite their inaccuracy, are widely used to screen candidates for government jobs. Released in 2014 by Converus, a Mark Cuban-funded startup, EyeDetect is pitched by its makers as a faster, cheaper, and more accurate alternative to the notoriously unreliable polygraph. By many measures, EyeDetect appears to be the future of lie detection -- and it's already being used by local and federal agencies to screen job applicants.

AmiMoJo writes: Japanese broadcaster NHK is launching the world's first 8K TV channel with a special edition of 2001: A Space Odyssey. NHK asked Warner Bros. to scan the original negatives at 8K specially for the channel.

8K offers 16 times the resolution of standard HD, 120 frames per second progressive scan, and 24 channels of sound. NHK is hoping to broadcast the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on the channel.
17 other channels also began broadcasting 4K programming today, according to Japan Times, even though, as Engadget points out, "almost no one has an 8K display, and most of the people who do need a special receiver and antenna just to pick up the signal... Also, HDMI 2.1 hasn't been implemented in any of these displays yet, so just getting the signal from box to TV requires plugging in four HDMI cables."

NHK's channel will broadcast for 12 hours a day, reports the BBC, adding that Samsung already sells an 8K TV for $15,000, and that LG has announced one too, while Engadget reports that Sharp sells one for $6,600.

On Monday, developer Crowbar Collective released the first trailer for Black Mesa: Xen, the final act of its long running remake of Valve's 1998 game Half-Life, which marked its 20-year anniversary on the same day. "The finale of Half-Life put hero Gordon Freeman in an alien world, and Black Mesa: Xen's upgraded graphics and redesign makes the original's muddy palette look vibrant and strange," reports Motherboard. "It looks just as exciting as it did at the time of the original game's release." From the report: When Valve unleashed Half-Life, it changed video games forever. The first person shooter from what was then a relatively unknown company starred a silent scientist beating down alien headcrabs and shooting human Marines in a novel sci-fi adventure. It was a triumph. Shortly after, in 2003, the Crowbar Collective began work on a remake that would come to be known as Black Mesa. Fan communities routinely reimagine their favorite video games, often as modifications, or mods, of the originals. Black Mesa began life as a free mod for Half-Life 2, but grew into a proper remake. Crowbar Collective added new voice work, changed animations, and tweaked the original game in hundreds of ways big and small. Black Mesa: Xen has a target release date of early 2019.

Zorro shares a report from Entertainment Weekly: The first-ever official Star Trek comedy series has been ordered. CBS All Access has greenlit an animated series from Emmy-winner Mike McMahan, a writer on Adult Swim's sensation Rick and Morty The half-hour series is titled Star Trek: Lower Decks and will tackle the Federation from a comedic perspective, focusing "on the support crew serving on one of Starfleet's least important ships." Fans will recognize the Lower Decks title as referencing the name of one of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

RockDoctor writes: An ad hoc committee of the International Astronomical Union has been working for 5 months on revisions and clarifications to the definitions of various terms used in technical and popular discussions of SETI -- the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence. They've published their draft report.

The terms of reference -- to account for existing popular and technical uses of the terms -- should mean that no major changes in usage occur, but interesting points do emerge from the discussion paper. For example, in discussing the term "extraterrestrial," their proposed definition ("shorthand for life or technology not originating recently on Earth") includes cover for possibilities such as "panspermia" which may be popular in "popular science," but certainly are not popular in the technical discussions. They go on to discuss that "by this definition, life on another planet with a common origin to Earth life but which diverged billions of years ago would be extraterrestrial, but Earth life accidentally brought to Mars on a human-built lander would not." Waiting for the invasion of the pedants, clutching their feet in their hands.

AmiMoJo quotes the Verge: The 2018 Hugo Awards were held Sunday night at the World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, California. The Hugo award, voted on by members of the fan community, is considered the highest honour for science fiction and fantasy literature... N.K. Jemisin took home the top honor for The Stone Sky, the third installment of her Broken Earth trilogy. Other winners include Martha Wells for her first Murderbot novella All Systems Red, Suzanne Palmer for her novelette "The Secret Life of Bots," and Rebecca Roanhorse for her short story "Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience." [Those last two links apparently let you read the entire story online!] Roanhorse also took home the John W. Campbell Jr. Award for Best New Writer.
Ursula K. Le Guin also posthumously won an award for "Best Related Work" for her collection of blog posts No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters.

And Zack Snyder finally won something, when Blade Runner 2049 lost in the "Best Dramatic Presentation -- Long Form" category to Wonder Woman ("screenplay by Allan Heinberg, story by Zack Snyder & Allan Heinberg and Jason Fuch.")

Doug Grindstaff, a five-time Emmy Award winner behind Star Trek's Tribble coos, communicator beeps, and Enterprise bridge door whooshes, has died at 87. The Hollywood Reporter looks back at Grindstaff's contributions to the Star Trek universe: [Grindstaff] received 14 Emmy nominations in all -- including one for Star Trek in 1967 -- and won for his editing on The Immortal in 1970, Medical Story in 1976, Police Story in 1978, Power in 1980 and Max Headroom in 1987. Working with Jack Finlay and Joseph Sorokin, Grindstaff created the background sounds and effects used on NBC's Star Trek. These sounds included red alert klaxons, the whoosh of Enterprise bridge doors opening/closing, heartbeats, boatswain whistles, sickbay scanners and communicator beeps and the acoustics that invoked phasers striking deflector shields and transporter materialization (and dematerialization).

In a 2016 interview for the Audible Range blog, Grindstaff noted that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry "wanted to paint the whole show [with sound] like you were painting a picture. "And he wanted sounds everywhere. One time I asked him, 'Don't you think we're getting too cartoony?' Because I felt it should be a little more dignified, but he wanted sound for everything. For example, I worked on one scene where [Dr. McCoy] is giving someone a shot. Gene says, 'Doug, I'm missing one thing. The doctor injects him and I don't hear the shot.' I said, 'You wouldn't hear a shot, Gene.' He said, 'No, no, this is Star Trek, we want a sound for it.' "So I turned around to the mixing panel and said, 'Do you guys have an air compressor?' And they did. I fired up the air compressor, squirted it for a long enough period by the mic, went upstairs, played with it a little bit and then put it in the show. And Gene loved it. So, that's how Gene was. He didn't miss nothing!" Grindstaff said he created Tribble coos by manipulating the sound of a dove.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have now created their own Richter-like scale [for measuring alien signals] to explain whether a finding is a damp squib or has truly seismic implications. The new scale allows scientists to rate interesting signals detected in searches for extraterrestrial intelligence from 0 to 10, where 0 is nothing to get excited about and 10 is equivalent to "an alien space probe orbiting the Earth or an alien shaking your hand," said Duncan Forgan, who worked on the project, at the University of St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science. Known as Rio 2.0, the scale is a proposed upgrade of an existing Rio scale that is already used by the alien-hunting community. It assigns scores to Seti ("search for extraterrestrial intelligence") signals by taking into account both the potential implications of the signal and the likelihood that it is genuine, rather than down to natural or human-made phenomena. Under the proposals, scientists could issue their own Rio scale number for any interesting signals they detect, but so could fellow academics who review their work for publication. The rating system is also being made available to the public. The scientists detailed the new Rio scale in the International Journal of Astrobiology.

Today Comic-Con attendees were treated to new trailers and previews for a slew of upcoming geek-friendly movies. An anonymous reader writes: Besides footage from Wonder Woman 1984, there were also trailers for DC's Aquaman movie, plus a new DC superhero franchise with a lighter tone, Shazam. (And there was also a very apocalyptic preview of Godzilla: King of the Monsters.)

Numerous celebrities were on-hand to tout their upcoming films. Johnny Depp introduced the trailer for Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald -- in character -- while Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson introduced the trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's Glass. Jamie Lee Curtis even plugged her return to the Halloween franchise 40 years after the original, revealing that her character has been waiting all these decades to kill Michael Myers after his release from prison.

TV Guide has collected most of the trailers for TV shows, including season 11 of Doctor Who, the revival of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and new seasons of Marvel's Iron Fist and Fear the Walking Dead. There was apparently also a trailer for Marvel's mutant series The Gifted -- and a preview for the 30th season of The Simpsons featuring this Halloween's "Treehouse of Horror XXIX", which includes a parody of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

CBS has released a "Season Two Premiere" for Star Trek Discovery, offering the first look at the upcoming season of the show on CBS All Access. The first season launched late last year and finished up in February after a brief hiatus. The Verge reports of what to expect from the upcoming season, which is expected to premiere sometime in early 2019: [It] appears to begin with Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) coming aboard and taking control of the USS Discovery after a series of mysterious "red bursts" are detected, simultaneously spread out across 30,000 light years. Burnham later claims "Spock is linked to these signals." New series guest star Tig Notaro makes a very Tig Notaro joke, Pike encourages the crew to "have a little fun," Tilly yells about "the power of math" -- a good time, in other words. (After all, the whole thing is set the tune of Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away," so you know it's real.) Bonus: at the end we meet another, very sniffly alien Discovery crew member, proving Saru and the bridge androids aren't the sole non-humans aboard the ship, as we once feared. At the Discovery panel at San Diego Comic Con's Hall H, a new Star Trek series was announced, called Star Trek: Short Treks. It is "a series of monthly short-form stories that will function like bonus content and air on CBS All Access in conjunction with the larger Star Trek: Discovery series," reports The Verge. "CBS says Short Treks, which will air in installments of about 10 to 15 minutes, is 'an opportunity for deeper storytelling and exploration of key characters and themes that fit into... the expanding Star Trek universe.'"

When it was originally released in 1968, audiences didn't really know what to make of "2001: A Space Odyssey". In fact, 250 critics walked out of the New York premiere, literally asking aloud, "What is this bullshit?"

[...] Stanley Kubrick himself was always hesitant to offer an explanation of the ending, once telling Playboy, "You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film -- and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level -- but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point." But, in a bizarre video, which appeared recently, the director seems to provide a very simple and clear explanation of the "2001: A Space Odyssey" ending. Esquire: It comes from a Japanese paranormal documentary from TV personality Jun'ichi Yaio made during the filming of The Shining. The documentary was never released, but footage was sold on eBay in 2016 and conveniently appeared online this week timed with the movie's 50th anniversary. Kubrick says in the interview: I've tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they're dramatized one feels it, but I'll try. The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film.

They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture (deliberately so, inaccurate) because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty, but wasn't quite sure. Just as we're not quite sure what do in zoos with animals to try to give them what we think is their natural environment. Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made into some sort of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest.

Slashdot reader Dave Knott brings news: Steve Ditko, the legendary comics artist best known for co-creating Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, has died at age 90. No cause of death was announced.
Neil Gaiman posted on Twitter, "I know I'm a different person because he was in the world." Entertainment Weekly reports: Ditko's most enduring characters were created during his tenure at Marvel Comics, where he worked alongside editor-in-chief Stan Lee to develop the look of Spider-Man in 1961. Jack Kirby had previously taken a swing at the webslinger, but Lee was unconvinced by that artist's interpretation of the now-iconic character.

When Spider-Man -- whose red-and-blue costume, Spidey senses, and web-shooters all came directly from Ditko -- first appeared within the pages of Amazing Fantasy No. 15, the friendly neighborhood superhero proved a surprisingly massive hit for Marvel Comics, paving the way for a solo comic series titled The Amazing Spider-Man. Ditko's influence on Spider-Man was tremendous, his often dark sensibilities informing an at-the-time rare superhero whose life was often worsened and trauma-filled as a consequence of his good deeds. The artist additionally helped conceive many of the most memorable members of Spidey's rogues' gallery, including Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Vulture, and the Lizard...

Two years later, Ditko delivered another Marvel icon by creating Doctor Strange, the mystical Sorcerer Supreme who furthered the comic book empire's reach into more cosmic, even psychedelic realms... As a freelancer, he continued contributing to Marvel and created cult-favorite character Squirrel Girl for them in 1992.

Slashdot readers chill and mrflash818 have shared the news of Harlan Ellison's passing. Variety reports: Speculative-fiction writer Harlan Ellison, who penned short stories, novellas and criticism, contributed to TV series including "The Outer Limits," "Star Trek" and "Babylon 5" and won a notable copyright infringement suit against ABC and Paramount and a settlement in a similar suit over "The Terminator," has died. He was 84. Christine Valada tweeted that Ellison's wife, Susan, had asked her to announce that he died in his sleep Thursday.

In an interview with James Cameron, George Lucas reveals what he'd planed for the final three Star Wars films: "[The next three 'Star Wars' films] were going to get into a microbiotic world," he told Cameron. "There's this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force...." In terms of his storytelling, Lucas regarded individuals as "vehicles for the Whills to travel around in... And the conduit is the midi-chlorians. The midi-chlorians are the ones that communicate with the Whills. The Whills, in a general sense, they are the Force."

Lucas is confident that had he kept his company, the Whills-focused films "would have been done. Of course, a lot of the fans would have hated it, just like they did 'Phantom Menace' and everything, but at least the whole story from beginning to end would be told."
Lucas acknowledges in the interview that "Everybody hated it in 'Phantom Menace' [when] we started talking about midi-chlorians," prompting one Ars Technica editor to add "Because it was a really dumb idea." He speculates that if the final three Star Wars movies followed Lucas's original plan, "Imagine, if you can, our heroes shrinking down like the Fantastic Voyage to go meet some midi-chlorians."

Knowing Lucas's plans for the franchise "should make every Star Wars fan send a note of gratitude to whoever at Disney decided to buy the franchise and take it away and out from under Lucas' control."