Blog Archive: October 2021

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Steam Next Fest

The Steam Next Fest is live and will run until October 8 and allows access to 720 free demos, 122 of which are sci-fi. Additionally there are 95 total and 21 sci-fi demos for unreleased titles.

You can find sci-fi is under "Themes and Moods" in the filter.

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Stargate Table Reading

GateWorld reports that former Stargate cast Amanda Tapping, Michael Shanks, David Hewlett and Jewel Staite are re-uniting to read an AI generated script for The Companion.

Looks like they only invited doctors, though Captain Doctor Samantha Carter has made it to General for this script.

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Lucy Loses Star Wars Role

In an interview with Metro, Lucy Lawless reveals that she had been in talks about a Star Wars role. Not in The Mandalorian.

Then controversy erupted around The Mandalorian's Gina Carano and there was a strong push from fans to replace Gina with Lucy.

Gina was ultimately fired but she and her controversial sentiments also had supporters among fans.

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China Loses Satellite

A recent flash in the night sky in New South Wales is believed to have been China's Shiyan-10 satellite. According to Space.com executing an expected upper rocket burn.

 A new object was catalogued in orbit and was likely this satellite but China have since declared it lost.

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Virgin Galactic Clear to Fly

Space.com reports that Virgin Galactic has been cleared to fly again by the US Federal Aviation Administration who grounded them pending an investigation into their July 11 crewed test flight.

Details of anomalies during that flight and previous claims by their flight test director of a disregard for safety were detailed in a New Yorker article.

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Skittles in Space

Skittles are running a sweepstakes - not open to Australians - with the prize being a Zero G flight. Not quite a space trip but nearly.

Once upon a time the only road into space was to be born in one of the few countries with a space program, train as an astronaut and then beat out all your fierce competition for a spot in a mission.

Now you can almost get there with a bag of candy and luck.

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Another Life Reunion

Entertainment Weekly reports a reunion of Battlestar Galactica cast in the second season of Another Life.

Katee Sackhoff who plays main character Niko Breckinridge will be joined by Rekha Sharma and Kate Vernon.

Both playing mothers. Sharma of an AI and Vernon of Sakhoff's character.

Season 2 will release on October 14 on Netflix.

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Apple's Race to the Stars

Variety has published an interesting analysis comparing Apple+ and its original content to other streaming services.

In brief, they're lagging behind. By self-reported measures other streaming services are typically performing about two to three times, and Netflix five times as strongly as Apple.

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Starfield's Plentiful Dialog

A twitterer has reported Todd Howard via the Tokyo Game Show revealing the number of lines of dialog in their upcoming RPG Starfield - 150,000. For comparison Skyrim had 60,000 and Fallout 4 almost double that with 111,000.

But is more, surprising or impactful?

Making numbers go up is the backbone of many games, including Todd's. It seems only fair that he need to do the same.

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Coldplay's My Universe

Coldplay and BTS released the video to accompany My Universe on YouTube.

At the 18 hour mark they have over 15.3 million views.

It's a cool little video with great special effects, a short sci-fi narrative and a nice tune.

Possibly another in a long list of signs of the growing popularity of sci-fi content.

Have there been other sci-fi music videos? Sure. But they're relatively rare and typically not space operatic.

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