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🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Alternate History

In science-fiction criticism, a Jonbar hinge or Jonbar point is the fictional concept of a crucial point of divergence between two outcomes, especially in time-travel stories. It is sometimes referred to as a Jon Bar hinge or change-point.

🔗 Novels 🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Transhumanism

A Fire Upon the Deep is a 1992 science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. It is a space opera involving superhuman intelligences, aliens, variable physics, space battles, love, betrayal, genocide, and a communication medium resembling Usenet. A Fire Upon the Deep won the Hugo Award in 1993, sharing it with Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.

Besides the normal print book editions, the novel was also included on a CD-ROM sold by ClariNet Communications along with the other nominees for the 1993 Hugo awards. The CD-ROM edition included numerous annotations by Vinge on his thoughts and intentions about different parts of the book, and was later released as a standalone e-book (no longer available).

🔗 China 🔗 Novels 🔗 Novels/Science fiction 🔗 Science Fiction

The Dark Forest (Chinese: 黑暗森林) is a 2008 science fiction novel by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin. It is the sequel to the Hugo Award-winning novel The Three-Body Problem in the trilogy titled Remembrance of Earth's Past, but Chinese readers generally refer to the series by the title of the first novel. The English version, translated by Joel Martinsen, was published in 2015. The novel is about the dark forest hypothesis (which was named after the novel), a possible solution to the Fermi paradox, though similar theories have been described as early as 1983.

🔗 Science Fiction

"Computers Don't Argue" is a 1965 science fiction short story by American writer Gordon R. Dickson, about the dangers of relying too strongly upon computers. It was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1966.

🔗 Film 🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Film/German cinema

World on a Wire (German: Welt am Draht) is a 1973 West German science fiction television serial, starring Klaus Löwitsch and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Shot in 16 mm, it was made for West German television and originally aired in 1973 in ARD as a two-part miniseries. It was based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye. An adaptation of the Fassbinder version was presented as the play World of Wires, directed by Jay Scheib, in 2012.

Its focus is not on action, but on sophistic and philosophic aspects of the human mind, simulation, and the role of scientific research. A movie based on the same novel titled The Thirteenth Floor starring Craig Bierko was released in 1999.

🔗 Video games 🔗 Film 🔗 Television 🔗 Science Fiction

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is a 2018 interactive film in the science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. It was written by series creator Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade. Netflix released the standalone film on 28 December 2018.

In Bandersnatch, viewers make decisions for the main character, the young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead), who is adapting a fantasy choose-your-own-adventure novel into a video game in 1984. Other characters include Mohan Thakur (Asim Chaudhry) and Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), both of whom work at a video game company, Butler's father, Peter (Craig Parkinson), and Butler's therapist, Dr. Haynes (Alice Lowe). The film is based on a planned Imagine Software video game of the same name which went unreleased after the company filed for bankruptcy. It also alludes to Lewis Carroll's own works that feature the bandersnatch creature. A piece of science fiction and horror, Bandersnatch incorporates meta-commentary and rumination on free will.

Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones were approached by Netflix about making an interactive film in May 2017, during which time Netflix had several interactive projects for children underway. Difficulty in writing the highly non-linear script led to the creation of a bespoke program called Branch Manager for Netflix; the unique nature of the content required adaptations in the platform's use of cache memory. Filming and production took longer than for typical Black Mirror episodes, resulting in the show's fifth series being delayed. A quickly-deleted tweet from a Netflix account about the release of Bandersnatch led to widespread media speculation throughout December which Netflix declined to comment on. The trailer for Bandersnatch was released on 27 December 2018, a day before the film was released. Critical reception for the film was generally positive, though some found the interactive nature to be too gimmicky for a proper Black Mirror narrative. In 2019, the episode won two Emmy Awards, including the Outstanding Television Movie award.

🔗 Novels 🔗 Novels/Science fiction 🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Solar System/Mars 🔗 Solar System

The Mars trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicles the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.

The three novels are Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), and Blue Mars (1996). The Martians (1999) is a collection of short stories set in the same fictional universe. Red Mars won the BSFA Award in 1992 and Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1993. Green Mars won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1994. Blue Mars also won the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1997.

Icehenge (1984), Robinson's first novel about Mars, is not set in this universe but deals with similar themes and plot elements. The trilogy shares some similarities with Robinson's more recent novel 2312 (2012); for instance, the terraforming of Mars and the extreme longevity of the characters in both novels.

🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Physics 🔗 Science Fiction

A black hole starship is a theoretical idea for enabling interstellar travel by propelling a starship by using a black hole as the energy source. The concept was first discussed in science fiction, notably in the book Imperial Earth by Arthur C. Clarke, and in the work of Charles Sheffield, in which energy extracted from a Kerr-Newman black hole is described as powering the rocket engines in the story "Killing Vector" (1978).

In a more detailed analysis, a proposal to create an artificial black hole and using a parabolic reflector to reflect its Hawking radiation was discussed in 2009 by Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland. Their conclusion was that it was on the edge of possibility, but that quantum gravity effects that are presently unknown will either make it easier, or make it impossible. Similar concepts were also sketched out by Bolonkin.

🔗 Internet culture 🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Robotics 🔗 Discrimination 🔗 English Language 🔗 Star Wars 🔗 Artificial Intelligence

"Clanker" is a derogatory term for robots and artificial intelligence (AI) software. The term has been used in Star Wars media, first appearing in the franchise's 2005 video game Star Wars: Republic Commando. By 2025, the term had become widely used to express hatred or distaste for machines ranging from delivery robots to large language models. This trend has been attributed to anxiety around the negative societal effects of AI.

🔗 Mass surveillance 🔗 Film 🔗 Film/American cinema 🔗 Science Fiction

THX 1138 is a 1971 American social science fiction film directed by George Lucas in his feature film directorial debut. It is set in a dystopian future in which the populace is controlled through android police and mandatory use of drugs that suppress emotions. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola and written by Lucas and Walter Murch, it stars Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence.

THX 1138 was developed from Lucas's student film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which he made in 1967 while attending the USC School of Cinematic Arts. The feature film was produced in a joint venture between Warner Bros. and American Zoetrope. A novelization by Ben Bova was published in 1971. The film received mixed reviews from critics and failed to find box-office success on initial release; however, the film has subsequently received critical acclaim and gained a cult following, particularly in the aftermath of Lucas' success with Star Wars in 1977.