The Great Geek Manual

Art

• This Map of Humanity is amazing. It’s an abstract rendering of the characteristics of geographic locals. Only, I think it was created before the recession, because “Detroit” is located near Industry, while Chicago is firmly within the borders of Depravity.

Film

• History and Trivia buffs should check out this timeline demonstrating How Star Wars Changed the World.
• Mary Robinette Kowal has posted a list of Five Fantasies to Navigate the Labyrinth of Tax Season, but I personally think she ought to have included the Terry Gilliam film Brazil, which, to me, epitomizes the sensations I get trying to fill out tax forms.
• SchoolGate runs down a list of 20 Movies which make you wish you’d gone to College.
• Yet another Terminator: Salvation movie poster has surfaced. This one making it look a little like a buddy cop flick.

Internet

• Finally, the truth behind how R2-D2 hacked the Death Star is revealed.
• Geeks everywhere died a little this week as Buffy’s Sarah Michelle Gellar announced that she’s expecting first child. Guess she’s not leaving Freddie Prinze Jr. for one of us after all, guys.
• Gizmodo has prepared a Time Travel Cheat Sheet with which you can become wealthy beyond your wildest dreams… once you’ve perfected your time travel device.
• It turns out that Zombies Are the New Vampires. Personally, I blame Stephanie Meyer.
• Read the obituary online: Dungeons & Dragons co-creator dies at 61.
• Seeing Der Ring des Nibelungen has long been on my list of things to do before I die, but it’s sheer length is discouraging, to say the least. However, I’ve just found a short, funny analysis that’s the next best thing to actually sitting through all fifteen hours of it. Watch it in three parts at YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Literature

• Free Fiction: Read “Beyond Lies the Wub” by Philip K. Dick at Feedbooks.
• Interview: Colin Brockhurst interviews John Christopher, author of the Tripods series.
• Author Ben Bova ran a great editorial in the Naple News this weekend: Science is so important to us, yet so unappreciated. “…popular fiction has practically nothing in it about science or scientists. Even science fiction, a field that I love, has shockingly few stories about scientific research and the way real scientists live and work.”
• Good news. Fourteen never-published Vonnegut short stories will be released this year.

Television

• The classic British comedy sf series Red Dwarf will return for three episodes.
• SFX looks back at those golden chestnuts of Swearing in Sci-Fi down the years.
• What If TV was more like Real Science?

Video Games

• It’s been done before and it’ll be done again, but this list of the Top 25 Hardest Games of All Time is fairly convincing, if a bit old school.
• Nadia Oxford delves into the psychology of video games when she asks, Why Do We Cheat?