Science Comedian » sci-fi

Philip K. Dick at the Movies

Brian — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 19:15:00 +0000

My newest video for Time.com is about Philip K. Dick and all the movie adaptations of his books and stories, the latest of which is The Adjustment Bureau, based on the story “Adjustment Team” written in 1953. It’s fascinating that Dick’s 50-year-old stories are just now being brought to the big screen – and still seem modern. Testament to the strangeness of his brain.

I do mistakenly say that Blade Runner is one of ten PKD “books” that have been adapted, when I meant to say, “stories.” Only a few novels have, so far, provided source material for films – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, A Scanner Darkly, Confessions of a Crap Artist, Radio Free Albemuth. Most of the movies are based on short stories (which do appear in books).

I produced, wrote and edited the video along with producer Craig Duff, who shot and provided additional editing:

Link:
The Movies, Philip K. Dick and You

Bad Science in Star Wars

Brian — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 22:16:32 +0000

FORA.tv has a short video of me performing at the recent Wonderfest science festival in Berkeley. I’m talking about bad science in science fiction movies, and the example in the clip is a classic moment from Star Wars…

Link to video on YouTube

Link to video on FORA.tv

Ray Bradbury Commercial for Prunes

Brian — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:54:43 +0000

Found this great old commercial for prunes featuring Ray Bradbury:

The Scientific Mind Behind FlashForward

Brian — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:50:18 +0000

Our most recent video for Time.com is about the new ABC series, “FlashForward.” The show is based on the 1999 novel by Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, whom we met this summer at the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop.

I went down to Los Angeles to meet Rob on the set of the show. Well, actually, it was a location shoot for, I believe, the 7th episode of the first season (yeah, I said, “first”!).

In Rob’s book, an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider causes everyone in the world to experience a bit of their own future. In the television series, we do not yet know what causes the flashforward but since Sawyer is a fan of science as well as science fiction, we took the opportunity to talk about a story that has captivated the press for the past couple years – that the LHC will create micro-black holes that will swallow up the Earth.

See the video – and many more – at Time.com.