The Most Promising Games of Fall 2009

Zombies, cars and thieves -- the crop of games coming this autumn has it all. Here's our guide to the titles we're most looking forward to.

The Most Promising Games of Fall 2009 // 'Borderlands' (Image courtesy of PC World)

'Borderlands' -- ETA Oct. 20
For: PS3, Windows, Xbox 360
Whether it actually "challenges all the conventions of modern shooters," or simply disguises them better than most, Gearbox Software's "Borderlands" is angling to upend your expectations. If "Diablo" and "Mad Max" were to have a baby, it would probably look like this game.
Imagine random levels, random creatures, random creature tactics and a massive arsenal of recombining weaponry, from revolvers that fire shotgun shells to rifles that spit rockets. Everything is tuned for speed, with online cooperative play that'll let up to four players drop in or out of missions and scour a post-apocalyptic alien planet for a legendary tech trove.
Along the way, you'll sign up for quests and upgrade character skills. All that's missing? Tina Turner and the Thunderdome.
Price: $60 ($50 for Windows version)

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The Most Promising Games of Fall 2009 // 'Modern Warfare 2' (Image courtesy of PC World)

'Modern Warfare 2' -- ETA: Nov. 10

For: PS3, Windows, Xbox 360

If I had to choose between Infinity Ward's "Modern Warfare" and competitor Retro Studios' "Metroid Prime," I'd go with "Metroid Prime." But, Activision's more-realistic-than-usual (but not very realistic) modern-era first-person shooter would still be up there.

The first "Modern Warfare" certainly sold like gangbusters, perhaps proving that we're finally burned out on games themed to World War II.

"Modern Warfare 2" brings more of the same, but tacks on dual-wield weapons, snowmobile races, Russian vistas, tons of new multiplayer features and the option to superheroically take on more than 50 enemies at once.

Silly or no, I predict that the sun won't go down before this game goes platinum. One warning: Don't fall for the Prestige Edition, which is priced over the moon at $150. I mean, an included pair of night-vision goggles? For real, Activision?

Price: $60

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The Most Promising Games of Fall 2009 // 'Left 4 Dead 2' (Image courtesy of PC World)

'Left 4 Dead 2' -- ETA: Nov. 17

For:Windows, Xbox 360

Heads exploding, bodies ripping open, swarms of bloody revenants scrambling over fences -- just another day in the office for developer Valve.

This sequel to last November's first-person multiplayer zombie-masher adds five new supersized campaigns and tweaks the rules just enough to justify its existence -- that is, if you're not one of the radicalized few who think that Valve is releasing this game too soon, or that the company owes players features that fall well outside the original's parameters.

Entitlement complex? People can grouse, but you'll want to judge this sequel on its own merits.

Price: $60 ($50 for Windows version)

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Top five: sci-fi vehicles

by Shaun Davis

The stories take us to distant worlds but what to drive when we get there? In accordance with this vehicular quandary, SciFiNow takes a look at some of the coolest rides to ever grace the galaxy.

Hop in!

The TARDIS
First appearance: 1963
In: Doctor Who
Pilot: The Doctor
Time machine and spacecraft, the TARDIS is the product of Time Lord technology and can transport occupants through space and time. An acronym of Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, the TARDIS is larger inside than it is out and can blend in with its surroundings. No weapons can be used inside its walls and the TARDIS grants its passengers the ability to understand and speak other languages – perfect for intergalactic travel or that two-week break in Benidorm

Millennium Falcon
First appearance: 1977
In: Star Wars
Pilots: Han Solo, Chewbacca
A legendary starship despite its humble origins and dilapidated exterior, the Falcon has factored into some of the Rebel Alliance’s greatest victories over the Empire. The galaxy’s most wily smuggler has made some ‘special modifications’ to give it illegal, not to mention damn right awesome, performance levels. Solo’s ‘heap of junk’ provided vital covering fire for Luke’s final run on the Death Star, sending Darth Vader into a hilarious barrel roll, and was Leia’s escape transport during the battle for Endor. Nevertheless, the Falcon’s true moment of glory came not when Han Solo was in the cockpit but when it was under the command of its previous owner, Lando Calrissian, when it soared into the Death Star and delivered a missile volley that helped seal the Empire’s fate. The Falcon comes complete with chessboard, mandibles rest concussion missile launchers and (unfortunately) a malfunctioning hyper drive.

The DeLorean
First appearance: 1985
In: Back To The Future
Pilots: Doc Brown, Marty McFly
“When this baby hits 88 miles an hour, we’re going to see some serious shit.” Doc Brown wasn’t wrong, as no car in film history has made such an impression on audiences as this temporal displacement vehicle. A customised DeLorean DMC-12 fitted with a plutonium-powered nuclear reactor and the Flux Capacitor (a necessary aid for time travelling), the DeLorean is later taken to new heights with a hover conversion. The DeLorean is used for good and bad ends with Doc and Marty trying to correct mistakes made and Biff using it for his own nefarious means, though why Marty would leave this bad boy unattended is beyond us. “Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Think McFly.”

Optimus Prime
First appearance: 1984
In: Transformers
Pilot: Prime
The fearless leader of the Autobots is the coolest truck to appear on screen. The original Prime transforms into a cab-over semi and carries the mystic talisman known as the Matrix of Leadership. In his trailer he carries Roller, a mobile scout buggy that can slip between enemy lines. He is the defender of Cybertron and is constantly clashing with lifelong nemesis Megatron in order to uphold the freedom ‘of all sentient beings’. Other powers include the ability to replace his right hand with a glowing Energon axe and, if Bay’s blockbuster is to be believed, the ability to scour the pages of eBay. With Prime leading the charge, his troops are never afraid to ‘transform and roll out.’

Planet Express Ship
First appearance: 1999
In: Futurama
Pilots: Turanga Leela, Philip J Fry
Though it might look like your average delivery ship, the Plant Express actually has a lot more to offer. As well as being very well armed it is also capable of travelling faster than the current speed of light, after the speed of light was increased to allow for faster travel. It is also revealed by Professor Farnsworth’s clone, Cubert, that the ship uses dark matter to move the universe around it instead of moving the ship through the universe. The Planet Express boasts a den, a reactor room and a laundry room, referred to by Zapp Brannigan as ‘the brig’. It is capable of functioning underwater and shrinking down to miniature in order to help fight off cantankerous worms.

Top 10 Geekiest Constructed Languages

By John Baichtal  August 26, 2009

J.R.R. Tolkien flipped readers’ wigs with his penchant for inventing new languages, but since then it has become almost de rigueur for fiction writers and moviemakers to include a constructed language (conlang) when crafting a new universe. Here are some of the best:

10. Esperanto
Invented in 1887, this real-world language is sometimes employed in movies to suggest a future language of humanity. Science fiction flick Gattaca and cult fave Red Dwarf employ the language as a background color (e.g., loudspeaker announcements and signs) while Whistler in Blade: Trinity has an entire conversation in Esperanto. The language gets additional geek cred by the fact that William Shatner starred in 1965 horror flick Incubus, the only mainstream wholly Esperanto movie ever released.

9. Fremen
Next to Tolkien, it’s hard to beat Frank Herbert when it comes to the amount of background info he generates when writing a story. Dune’s appendices blew my mind as a young nerd and motivated me to create excessive backstory in my own experiments with fiction. As with Tolkien, Herbert drew liberally from real-world cultures for his universe. Fremen is no exception, serving as a descendant of earthly Arabic, lending the Fremen people a dervishlike feel.

8. Qwghlmian
From Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon novel and Baroque Cycle trilogy, this fictional language allegedly hails from obscure British islands. It has 16 consonants and no vowels, making it ideal for representing binary information, as well as making it nearly impossible to pronounce. You really have to read the books to get more of a sense of the language — like all things Stephensonian, he presents an overwhelming amount of information and leaves it to the reader to decode it all.

7. Vampirese
An ancient vampire language from the Blade movies. The most noticeable aspect of this language are the glyphs, symbols tattooed on grunts to show their allegiance and drawn in UV ink defining the boundaries of various vampires’ territories. There’s even a vampire holy book written in the language, the Book of Erebus, featured in the first movie.

6. Gelfling
While the Gelfling language is mentioned only briefly in The Dark Crystal, we nevertheless get a tantalizing glimpse of this lost culture. What we do know is that the long-dead ancient Gelflings who got wasted by the Skeksis left behind ruins covered in beautiful hieroglyphs, which apparently only male Gelflings can read. Yeah, well, the females get wings!
5. Sindarin
While Tolkien created several languages for his various Lord of the Rings books, Sindarin, the language of the elves, is not only his most beautiful but also his most fully realized invented language. Typically, Tolkien and his language-nerd adherents have developed the tongue’s grammar and orthography to almost headache-inducing levels.

4. Huttese
The Star Wars canon (as well of a plethora of non-canonical writings) describe the Hutts as being an ancient race of merchants who once dominated the galaxy but now have become mere gangsters. We first got a taste of Huttese in Return of the Jedi, where it was described as the “court language” of Jabba the Hutt. That tiny taste of Hutt culture has been expanded in subsequent novels and videogames, giving us a clearer picture of this rotund race.

3. R’lyehian
Pretty much everything about the Cthulhu mythos (introduced in the classic Lovecraft short story The Call of Cthulhu is designed to drive ordinary mortals mad, and the otherworldly language R’lyehian is no different. Indeed, it’s barely speakable: ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn (In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu lies dreaming) is the classic R’lyehian phrase that alludes to the godlike monstrosity and his bizarre, non-Euclidean city.

2. City Speak
“That gibberish he talked was city speak, gutter talk,” Rick Deckard intones in the non-director’s cut version of Blade Runner. “A mishmash of Japanese, Spanish, German, what have you.” The concept of a ‘common tongue’ has been enshrined in science fiction and fantasy literature forever, but this execution was effortless and brilliant, adding color to the movie without making a big deal out of it.

1. Klingon
Perhaps the most fully realized science fiction language, Klingon has a complete grammar and vocabulary, permitting countless nerds to learn it like it was high school Spanish. Fans have translated Shakespeare, Sun Tzu and the Bible into the language. There’s a Klingon Language Institute, the purpose of which is to promote the language and culture of this nonexistent people. You can even select Klingon as your language of choice in Google.

And now for something completely different

 

Da Yoopers - Live on Stage With Da Yoopers '08 (Sheboygan Co. Fair)

Da Yoopers - Live on Stage With Da Yoopers Sheboygan Co. Fair

We packed 'em in again for some hot fun in the sun! Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

Hoolie enjoys a laugh with the audience Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

Let's all sing now, "20 Yoopers in a pontoon boat, fishing for Moby Dick!" Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

Let's all sing now, "I'm too drungk, boyz, (spit) I'm too drungk, boyz (burp) All Dat beerz gay me a wittle tummy ache, BARFFF!!!" Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

Hoolie and our good friend Chris Hansen (Chris took some of these pics from this show, thanks pal!) Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

Here's Lynn with our good friend (Chris's Mom) Barb Hansen. Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

Here's Lynn poseing for a pic with Chris.. Hmmm, who does Lynn remind me of with that expression? Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

"I WANNA WOCK AND WOE ALL NIGHT, N' PAWTY EVWWWY DAY!" Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

Reg rocks the crowd during Turdy Pound Diaper. Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

"HE STARTS KICKIN' HIS LEGS ALL OVER DA PLACE" "EEEEH! DA TURDY POUND DIAPER!" Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

Me: "hey Hoolie, whadda ya see? Hoolie: emmmmmmmm, someting good.. Me: well, come on, whadda ya see, eh? Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

Hoolie: "dey're big, really big! I know what dey are now... Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

Me: "what are dey? Hoolie: JOUNCING JILK JAZONGA'S!" Me: "I THIRST!" Sheboygan Co. Fair Plymoth, WI

“Family Guy” Spoofs Empire

Fans of the “Family Guy: Blue Harvest” special are in for a treat with the next Star Wars inspired “Family Guy” as the show spoofs Empire Strikes Back next!

Sci-Fi Wire interviewed “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane about the next installment, due to air sometime in the next season on FOX.

“It will be called Something Something Something Dark Side,” MacFarlane teased.

“Lando is played by Mort Goldman, who is the Jewish guy who lives up the street,” Seth MacFarlane said in an interview at Fox’s fall-season premiere party in Beverly Hills, Calif., this week. “We figured, black guy, Jewish guy, why not?”

In the sequel, “Boba Fett is played by the giant chicken,” Peter’s nemesis, MacFarlane said.

As in “Blue Harvest,” Stewie plays Darth Vader, and Chris plays Luke–leading to the awkward moment when Stewie tells Chris that he is his father. “Yeah, basically,” MacFarlane said. “He will have to tell Chris that he’s his father.”

“Family Guy” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT, with new episodes beginning Sept. 28.

Read the full interview here:
Guy To Lampoon Empire (Sci Fi Wire)

Also be sure to check out with our interview with Seth about the “Blue Harvest” special and his love for Star Wars here:
“Family Guy” Creator Reveals Star Wars Cred (Starwars.com)

The Ten Best Sci-Fi Planets

Most planets featured in science fiction tend to be rather generic. These planets are usually convenient celestial bodies upon which to pitch a narrative tent for a few scenes before the plot moves on. Generic planets also tend to be one-note, reflecting some particular environment on Earth. You have your ice-worlds, desert worlds, lava worlds, jungle worlds, water worlds, city worlds, forest worlds (in particular, forests that look like those near the city of Vancouver), earthquake worlds, and so on.

But sometimes an author will create a world whose presence has a weight and ring of truth, a world that feels like it could happily go on existing on its own terms, with or without a protagonist or antagonist strolling around on its surface. Setting aside obviously artificial habitats like ring words or hollowed out asteroids, here are my top ten best science fiction planets, in chronological order:

1. Solaris (1961): You may or may not have liked the films, but Stanislaw Lem’s conception of a world so utterly alien that it defies any genuine human comprehension still resonates.

2. Dune (1965): Best Planet Ever. At first glance, it’s just one of those one-note desert worlds. But Frank Herbert created a complete ecosytem, deep geological history, and a complex native society to go with his sand-covered planet. Dune is no mere backdrop, it drives the plot of Herbert’s complex saga as inexorably as the law of gravity.

3. Annares (1974): Ursula LeGuin’s novel The Dispossessed featured two worlds, a more-or-less straightforward analog for cold-war era Earth, and the far more interesting Annares, where settlers established an anarcho-syndicate-based society in a bid to be free from authoritarian government. LeGuin created a believable society for Annares—including the unpleasant side effects (such as intellectual conservatism) of trying to create a human utopia.

4. Mote Prime (1974): In Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s The Mote in God’s Eye, this is the homeworld of the Moties, a species that, due to cosmic happenstance, has been bottled up in its solar system ever since it evolved. Mote Prime is planet which has become a palimpsest, mutely testifying to the endless cycles of technological development and collapse experienced by the trapped Moties.

5. LV-426 (1979): The dread planet that featured briefly in Alien, and was the location for 1986’s Aliens. In both movies, LV-426 is perfectly portrayed as part of a cosmos utterly indifferent to human concerns, such as staying alive.

6. Dagobah (1980): The Star Wars franchise is a planet-producing machine: Tatooine, Yavin IV, Alderan, Hoth, Endor, Coruscant, Naboo, etc, etc. But Dagobah sticks out for its organic messiness and claustrophobic atmosphere that stands in contrast to the typical open spaces that provide the large stages for the movies’ space opera.

7. Lusitania (1986): The setting of Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead, Lusitania is the exception that proves the rule—it is fascinating not because it is a rich world, but because its ecosystem has so little diversity, and the implications that has for the book’s characters.

8. Red, Green and Blue Mars (1993-1996): Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy has become the standard against which all hard science fiction books about Mars are weighed. Beginning in the near future, with the founding of the first permanent outpost on the red planet, and continuing for two centuries as Mars is terraformed, Robinson’s Mars is a meticulously researched and believable fictional version of our solar system neighbor.

9. P2 (2004): P2 is a world orbiting the nearby Barnard’s star, and it is settled by fantastically advanced exiles from the solar system in Wil McCarthy’s Lost in Transmission. Unfortunately, all their technology can’t make up for some basic deficiencies in the carrying capacity of the Barnard system, and what happens to P2 is reminiscent of Flowers for Algernon, but on a planetary scale.

10. Nasqueron (2004): A gas giant, home of the maddeningly unconcerned Dwellers, and location of much of Iain M. Banks’ The Algebraist. Nasqueron becomes not just the huge canvas the Banks requires for his sprawling tales, but also becomes an integral element in the plot, as the protagonist struggles to understand the Dwellers.