Brace Yourselves. Sci Fi Season is coming.
I hope everyone had a great holiday last month. For some of us winter is approaching, for others, summer is just around the corner. And for those planning to colonize other worlds, well I guess you’re coming up with your own types of seasons.
On some parts of the equator there are two seasons. Hot, and rainy hot. Near the poles there is bright winter, and dark winter.
Many countries experience many different seasons, so it is strange that we keep thinking in Spring, Summer, Autumn (Fall) and Winter.
A good example of this is that the aboriginal communities in the lower half of Australia recognize six seasons. These are called Birak, Bunuru, Djeran, Makuru, Djilba and Kambarang, and better reflect the diverse nature of our climate.
What sort of seasons will we come up with when we begin colonizing worlds? Gassy season? Radioactive season? EM season? Quake season? Starspot season? Perhaps we might colonize worlds that are more noticeably alive than Earth. Don’t take an away team down during Feeding season!
Future issues of Alien Dimensions have some vague themes. Issue 8 has a ‘rocks’ theme. Issue 9 will have a positive drugs theme and issue 10 will probably feature a few more robots. So, perhaps issue 11 should include a crazy alien world weather theme? If you’ve got a story along those lines, please visit the submissions page to find out more.
Of course, the best season is Sci Fi season, and what a season we’re having so far. The new Doctor Who series is great, and is perfect for anyone just getting into the series and needing a good place to start. Star Trek: Discovery is due out later this year with a completely new style of writing to support modern binge watchers. (Rather than an encapsulated story each week, it’ll be a set of 13 interlinked stories.) The big surprise isn’t the return of Twin Peaks, or more X-Files or even more Red Dwarf, it’s the return of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 which, to my knowledge, only ever made it out of the USA via smuggled VHS copies. Hardly something that could come back without the world having watched it. (So, I’m very curious, and would love to see those robots again. My main reason for watching Other Space was because Joel was in it, with a robot!)
2017 will also see a new series of ‘Monkey.’ The international version of the series (late 1970s) was with Japanese actors, based on the Chinese story Journey to the West. The new series will star, um, Australians and New Zealanders! (Dreading this, I tell you!)
I think the one that SciFi anthology fans, especially of series like The Outer Limits or The Twilight Zone, might be more interested in though is the new series called Dimension 404, available via Hulu. Highly recommended! It even has one of my favorite words in the title.
Check out the trailer here:
Leave a comment if you know of other series we should look out for.