January 23, 2020
Engage! 2020 in Science Fiction
2020 is shaping up to be a great year for science fiction!
New Trek
Today the much anticipated Star Trek Picard is released on streaming services. I spent my younger years watching episodes of The Next Generation, the Star Trek series which will always be my Trek! Picard explores Jean Luc’s future decades after The Next Generation and the subsequent films that followed the TNG cast. There is also more Discovery and another new animated show, Lower Decks, releasing this year.
New Half Life
A surprise announcement came last November with the news that there is a new Half Life game set to be released soon - not Half Life 3 (or Half Life 2: Episode 3) - but a prequel to Half Life 2 titled Half Life Alyx. It was announced that the biggest team ever to work on Half Life game has been working on Alyx, and that it will be a VR-only game. I really hope this means in the next couple years there will be a new VR sequel to Portal!
New Dune
Dune, the ultimate science fiction book is getting a new film adaptation from Denis Villeneuve, who previously directed Sicario, Arrival, and the outstanding sequel to Blade Runner.
I read Dune in high school and it really stuck with me. It was a captivating story that I read through a few times to really get all the different elements of the story. The allegory to dependence on fossil fuels, the class warfare, the environmentalism, the fear of technology … all seem like story elements that are incredibly relevant today.
Dune has previously been put to film twice - first in 1884 as a film by David Lynch (who turned down an opportunity to direct the second Star Wars to instead direct Dune) - and in the early 2000s the SyFy channel (or SciFi channelel as it was then named) produced a mini-series of Dune and it’s sequel Dune Messiah. The David Lynch Dune has received some criticism for being
Labels: dune, half life, science fiction, Star Trek
