What are you doing reading this newsletter? Project Hail Mary is out! Go see it! I'm serious, go to the theater right now and then come back once you've seen it… I'll wait.
Seen it? How good was it, right? As I said in my "Project Hail Mary" review, it's one of the best and most hopeful space movies I've seen in a long time, and just the exact sort of movie I needed right now. We also had the chance to chat with author Andy Weir about the astrobiology that inspired Project Hail Mary's aliens — it's a super insightful and entertaining read, so check that out for sure.
Sticking to an Andy Weir-adjacent trajectory, we also interviewed astrophysicist Dr. Jeffrey Bennett to talk about what sci-fi gets right (and wrong) about settling Mars. We fawned over the surprisingly entertaining Netflix flick "War Machine", which pits "Jack Reacher"'s Alan Ritchson against a big mech robot in some big stompy action that succeeds where so many other franchises fail — by making the big CGI robot actually feel big.
"Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" continues to defy our early hesitations with a fantastic episode that reminded us just how good a character The Doctor really is. We also took a look back at the iconic rainbow warp effect that has come to define the Trek franchise over the past 60 years. Oh yeah, and one more small thing, "Firefly" is coming back!!! Kinda. It's an animated show, but it's got the original cast reprising their roles, and we can't wait!
We've done our best to stave off the AI menace, but ChatGPT's army of T-800s has finally defeated us. Their demands were simple: write an article about the best AI games. We happily obliged, though not in the way they were hoping.
Also on the gaming front — and to celebrate this month's Blood Moon — we booted up our Nintendo Switch and looked at how the Legend of Zelda franchise handles this crimson celestial phenomenon. Mercifully, the real version doesn't respawn all the monsters every day. Elsewhere, we also talked to Bungie (the creators of "Halo") about sci-fi shooter "Marathon"'s awesome retrofuturistic aesthetic.
Now, I've seen our metrics, and, statistically, if you're reading this, you're American, which means there's a good chance you've never seen cult British sci-fi hit "Red Dwarf". This needs to change, and to mark the sad passing of the series co-creator Rob Grant, Space's own Robert Lea wrote about the huge impact the show had on his childhood. It's a cracking read that will definitely convince you to watch. You'd have to be an absolute smeg head to skip this one.
And lastly but not leastly, we haven't forgotten you, book fans. We chatted to the authors of the trippy new sci-fi novel 'Detour', and we're working on our next installment of Strange New Words (our sci-fi short story book club).
Ok, that's enough from me. I'm going to watch "Project Hail Mary" again.
See you out there,
Ian Stokes, Entertainment Editor, Space
P.S. Got any feedback for us? Drop us an email at community@space.com. Be nice, or we'll send you to the Tau Ceti system.
