SciFi Tech Talk

Julie, Jeff, and Mike look back at their favorites of the past 200 episodes and look forward to so many more to come!

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2018 movie Annihilation:"A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don't apply." - imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2018 movie Tau: "A woman is held captive by a scientist in a futuristic smart house, and hopes to escape by reasoning with the Artificial Intelligence that controls the house." - imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2017 movie Beyond Skyline: "A tough-as-nails detective embarks on a relentless pursuit to free his son from a nightmarish alien warship." - imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2018 movie The Titan: "A military family takes part in a ground-breaking experiment of genetic evolution and space exploration." - imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2016 book "We Are Legion (We Are Bob)": Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty. The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2018 movie Anon: In a near-future world where there is no privacy, ignorance or anonymity, our private memories are recorded and crime almost ceases to exist. In trying to solve a series of unsolved murders, SAL FRIELAND (Owen) stumbles onto a young woman (Seyfried) who appears to have subverted the system and disappeared. She has no identity, no history and no record. Sal realizes it may not be the end of crime but the beginning. Known only as THE GIRL, she must be found before Sal becomes the next victim. —Andrew Niccol on imdb.com

Julie, Jeff and Mike discuss the 2013 movie Her: "Sensitive letter writer Theodore has just ended his marriage. Lonely, he goes out to buy an artificially intelligent Operating System that promises to give him everything he needs. Samantha is more than his average OS. She does secretarial work for him but also becomes his friend whenever he's lonely. They go out on adventures and travel together. He becomes the physical feet to get them places, and she the new eyes in which to see the world. Their intimate moments soon turn into love and they start an unusual relationship between OS and human. Things get complicated as they deal with Theodore's complex emotions and Samantha's inability to provide physical comfort. What happens to an OS when its consciousness is altered? Or to a sensitive man who doubts his emotions?" — Marielle on imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2016 book Version Control: "Rebecca Wright has reclaimed her life, finding her way out of her grief and depression following a personal tragedy years ago. She spends her days working in customer support for the internet dating site where she first met her husband. But she has a strange, persistent sense that everything around her is somewhat off-kilter: she constantly feels as if she has walked into a room and forgotten what she intended to do there; on TV, the President seems to be the wrong person in the wrong place; her dreams are full of disquiet. Meanwhile, her husband's decade-long dedication to his invention, the causality violation device (which he would greatly prefer you not call a “time machine”) has effectively stalled his career and made him a laughingstock in the physics community. But he may be closer to success than either of them knows or can possibly imagine. Version Control is about a possible near future, but it’s also about the way we live now. It’s about smart phones and self-driving cars and what we believe about the people we meet on the Internet. It’s about a couple, Rebecca and Philip, who have experienced a tragedy, and about how they help — and fail to help — each other through it." - goodreads.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2014 movie The Giver - "In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the 'real' world." - imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2006 movie Children of Men: In 2027, in a chaotic world in which women have become somehow infertile, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea. - imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2015 movie Infini: "An elite 'search and rescue' team transport onto an off-world mining-facility to rescue Whit Carmichael, the lone survivor of a biological outbreak." - imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2016 movie Arrival: "When twelve mysterious spacecrafts appear around the world, linguistics professor Louise Banks is tasked with interpreting the language of the apparent alien visitors." - imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 1985 book The Handmaid’s Tale: "Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now..." - goodreads.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2016 movie "Passengers": A spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet and transporting thousands of people has a malfunction in its sleep chambers. As a result, two passengers are awakened 90 years early. - imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 1956 movie Forbidden Planet: "A starship crew goes to investigate the silence of a planet's colony only to find two survivors and a deadly secret that one of them has." - imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 1968 movie Barbarella: "Barbarella is marked by the same audacity and originality, fantasy, humor, beauty and horror, cruelty and eroticism that make comic books such a favorite. The setting is the planet Lythion in the year 40,000, when Barbarella makes a forced landing while traveling through space. She acts like a female James Bond, vanquishing evil in the forms of robots and monsters. She also rewards, in an uninhibited manner, the handsome men who assist her in the adventure. Whether she is wrestling with Black Guards, the evil Queen, or the Angel Pygar, she just can’t seems to avoid losing at least a part of her skin-tight spacesuit!" - iTunes

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the book "2312": "The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future." - Amazon.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 1981 movie, The Road Warrior: “In the post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland, a cynical drifter agrees to help a small, gasoline rich, community escape a band of bandits.” - imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 1976 movie The Man Who Fell To Earth: “Thomas Jerome Newton is a humanoid alien who comes to Earth to get water for his dying planet. He starts a high technology company to get the billions of dollars he needs to build a return spacecraft, and meets Mary-Lou, a girl who falls in love with him. He does not count on the greed and ruthlessness of business here on Earth, however.” - imdb.com