science fiction

TV and the movies are full of slapdash -- extremely slapdash -- science. A mystical wave of the hand, a chalkboard full of scribbles, and voila! Cold fusion in every home. That gets no respect from me. But the practitioners of that science... well, sometimes they make it look really good.

So you can keep your wild-haired Wolverine with his tanned muscles and adamantium appendages. My lust objects wear glasses and SPF 45. Knowing how to maim and kill is all well and good, but reciting the digits of pi and lecturing co-eds in dusty classrooms is hot.

Here are 20 fictional scientists I just can't stop watching. Take a look at who excites my atoms.

Catching up with artists and writers at New York Comic Con, we heard about new science and technology in comics, graphic novels, video games, and film. While many new stories hinge on emerging technologies, the best of the classic stories incorporate the newest science into ongoing sagas, often rewriting the past. In either case, these graphical genres can explore the consequences of scientific progress in the not too distant future.

With the holiday season fast approaching, multiplexes have begun filling up with the Nazi-themed award magnets that always seem to flood the market at the end of the year. However, amidst the plethora of films filled with series English actors in sharp Teutonic uniforms a single high budget, special effects crammed movie squeezed into theaters on December 12th. The Day The Earth Stood Still, a remake of the canonical 1951 science-fiction film, switches out a widowed secretary for an astrobiologist played by Jennifer Connelly, and attempts to earn the science in science-fiction. So, does the science hold up?

Michael Crichton, best known as the author of such books like Jurassic Park and movies like Westworld, died last night from cancer at his home in Los Angeles, California at the age of 66. He is survived by his wife Sherri and his daughter Taylor. A medical doctor with a degree from Harvard, Crichton’s works and movies brought science to a mainstream audience, introducing readers to concepts like cloning and chaos theory.

No, you can't hike or spelunk or even tunnel down to the center of the Earth, even if movies like The Core or this summer's 3D adventure flick, Journey to the Center of the Earth, suggest otherwise. To find out about our planet's insides, scientists rely on very different tricks. And, apparently, a little luck.

So it's not happening quite as quickly as we'd been told in previous stories on the subject, but the 3D revolution does seem to be coming. One of the hold-ups has been convincing theater owners to upgrade to projection and display systems that can handle this new wave of 3D tech—it takes around $75,000 to switch over an old theater. But the 3D companies have been arguing that this upgrade enables theaters to become more than just movie houses: They can show concerts, sporting events, even operas in 3D, and charge more per seat.

An 81-year-old man constructed a machine that allowed him to remotely fire a .22 semi-automatic pistol, then set it up in his driveway and killed himself. Reportedly, the man's relatives had been encouraging him to move out of his home and into a care facility.

Instead, he did some research on the Internet and built what was only described as a complex machine—the local paper that broke the story is keeping wraps on how it actually worked.

Arthur C. Clarke:  the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation

Clarke, author of some of the genre's classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Childhood's End, was a tireless enthusiast for science and technology. Arguably, though, Clarke's most striking contribution to humanity, published in a paper in 1945, was his idea of using geostationary satellites as communications relay stations.

To the dismay of the many scientists whose work and words are blatantly distorted within its pages, Michael Crichton´s new book, State of Fear, was still hanging around best-seller lists months after its debut. It even came up in debates on the Senate floor. Science has always taken center stage in Crichton´s thrillers—The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Prey—but recently he seems to be taking himself, and his ideas, a bit more seriously.

In 2004, Matthew Teague traveled to Arthur C. Clarke's Sri Lankan home for a Popular Science profile. They candidly discussed Clarke's incredible legacy as well as his insatiable thirst—even at age 87—for the next Big Idea. Here we present again this feature in tribute to a man whose visions still continue to profoundly influence the world of science and technology today.

The gate to Arthur C. Clarke's compound stood tall, white and blast-proof. We ran our hands over its surface, poking around for some secret doorbell. "Hello? Can anybody hear us?"

I wasn't trespassing—I'd called ahead, and Clarke agreed to see me, apparently curious why an American would track him down to this doorstep in Sri Lanka, the tiny, troubled island nation off the coast of India. But the place spooked Thilac, my Sri Lankan driver. "Maybe wrong house," he said, looking around. "OK?"