CNN has a story about a Chinese prototype helicopter that looks like a UFO. Slashdot reader ClickOnThis shares the report: China has been unveiling a lot of new weaponry lately, but one of their latest reveals looks really, well, out of this world. Called the "Super Great White Shark" by Chinese media, the aircraft conjures up images of 1950s sci-fi movies more than 21st century technology. But China says the "armed helicopter" was designed for the "future digital information battlefield." State-tabloid the Global Times published an image gallery of the aircraft, calling it a fusion of modern, proven helicopter designs -- such as the American AH-64 Apache and CH-53 Sea Stallion as well as the Russian Ka-52 and Mi-26 copters. It also has the blended-wing design employed by stealth aircraft, including the US B-2 bomber. [...] The prototype was displayed last week at the China Helicopter Exposition in Tianjin. It was a static display only. The aircraft is landbound -- at least for now.

A family who spent nine years in a basement "waiting for the end of time" have been discovered by police in the Netherlands after one of them turned up at a local pub, reports say. The BBC reports: A man of 58 and a family with young adults aged 18 to 25 were living at a farm in the province of Drenthe. They were found after the eldest of the children ordered beer at a bar in the nearby village of Ruinerwold. He then told staff he needed help, broadcaster RTV Drenthe reported. The older man, who has been arrested, was initially assumed to be the father, but local mayor Roger de Groot later told reporters that was not the case. Nor was the man the owner of the farmhouse, Mr de Groot said, adding: "I've never seen anything like it."

The public broadcaster said that the family had been living in isolation waiting for the end of time. Unconfirmed reports said the children's father was among those found. Bar owner Chris Westerbeek described how a man had come in, ordered five beers and drunk them. "Then I had a chat with him and he revealed he had run away and needed help... then we called the police," he said. He added: "He had long hair, a dirty beard, wore old clothes and looked confused. He said he'd never been to school and hadn't been to the barber for nine years." "He said he had brothers and sisters who lived at the farm. He said he was the oldest and wanted to end the way they were living." Officers visited the remote farmhouse and carried out a search. They discovered a hidden staircase behind a cupboard in the living room that led down to a basement room where the family were housed.

Freshly Exhumed writes: Adam Frank, professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and consultant on numerous movie scripts, was excited to watch "Ad Astra," the new Brad Pitt space thriller. The film was promoted with the promise of scientific realism in depicting a solar system well on its way to being settled by humanity. Unfortunately, Professor Frank finds that despite very good intentions, "Ad Astra" strikes the wrong balance between story and fact, art and artifice. While the plot ventures out to the farthest planet Neptune, the demands of the film's theme cramp its science fiction imagination. Instead of letting us explore a vision of our common future in space, "Ad Astra" delivers a solar system stripped down to fit a very particular story.

Local authorities in Rachel, Nevada -- the location of a planned Aliengate festival that evolved out of a viral Facebook event -- are considering taking legal action to cover $250,000 the county plans to spend to prepare for the potential onslaught of visitors. Gizmodo reports: Matty Roberts created the "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us" Facebook event on June 27 as a joke, but the event went viral and evolved into an actual festival -- Alienstock -- which was planned for September 19-22 at the Little A'Le'Inn in Rachel, Nevada, near the US Air Force base known as Area 51. But just a few days before the event was supposed to begin, Roberts and his partners backed out, posting on their website that they "foresee a possible humanitarian disaster in the works" and after considering "the lack of infrastructure, planning, and risk management, along with concerns raised for the safety of the expected 10,000+ attendees, we decided to transition Alienstock away from the Rachel festival towards a safer alternative." That safer alternative is an "Area 51 Celebration" happening on Thursday night at the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center.

However, Little A'Le'Inn owner Connie West has made it very clear that she still plans to host her own Alienstock, despite Roberts' attorney sending her a cease-and-desist letter ordering her to stop using the name "Alienstock" since the event at that location was canceled. Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee told Gizmodo that as of Wednesday morning, people had already started arriving at A'Le'Inn. "Matty Roberts is the one that started this on Facebook. So our district attorney, his opinion is that Matty Roberts and Facebook stand to be partially to blame for this" Lee told Gizmodo. "He's already told people that this is quote-unquote 'His event.' He told some of the other event promoters that this was his event. And so I guess if it's his event and he's taken ownership of it then we know where legal action should go toward. I'm not an attorney but that is what Lincoln County district attorney is saying." Facebook is protected from legal action regarding content created by one of its users under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but it's possible that the district attorney may argue that this particular circumstance wouldn't be covered by those protections.

A Navy official has confirmed that recently released videos of unidentified flying objects are real, but that the footage was not authorized to be released to the public in the first place. From a report: Joseph Gradisher, the spokesman for the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, confirmed to TIME that three widely-shared videos captured "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena." Gradisher initially confirmed this in a statement to "The Black Vault" a website dedicated to declassified government documents. "The Navy designates the objects contained in these videos as unidentified aerial phenomena," Gradisher told the site.

He tells TIME that he was "surprised" by the press coverage surrounding his statement to the site, particularly around his classification of the incursions as "unidentifiable," but says that he hopes that leads to UAP's being "de-stigmatized." "The reason why I'm talking about it is to drive home the seriousness of this issue," Gradisher says. "The more I talk, the more our aviators and all services are more willing to come forward." Gradisher would not speculate as to what the unidentified objects seen in the videos were, but did say they are usually proved to be mundane objects like drones -- not alien spacecraft. "The frequency of incursions have increased since the advents of drones and quadcopters," he says. The three videos of UFOs were published by the New York Times and "To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science," a self-described "public benefit corporation" co-founded by Tom DeLonge, best known as the vocalist and guitarist for the rock band, Blink-182.

DevNull127 writes: The 77th World Science Fiction Convention announced the winners of the 2019 Hugo Awards at a ceremony Sunday night.

Here's some of the highlights. At least two of these stories can be read (for free) online:

BEST NOVELETTE: "If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again," by Zen Cho. The entire text is availabe online in the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, where it was published in November of 2018.

BEST SHORT STORY: "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies," by Alix E. Harrow. The complete text is available online, published in Apex Magazine in February 2018.

BEST NOVEL: The Calculating Stars, which presents an alternate history in which a meteor "decimates the U.S. government and paves the way for a climate cataclysm that will eventually render the earth inhospitable to humanity. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated timeline in the earth's efforts to colonize space..."

BEST NOVELLA: Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries #2. ("it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more...")

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
The Daily Dot reports that there was also one very unusual winner: Archive of Our Own (AO3), the fan-run, nonprofit website that's home to more than 5 million transformative works like fanfiction, fanart, and podfics, won one of science fiction's most prestigious awards at Worldcon Sunday night.

The website (which is part of the Organization of Transformative Works) won the Hugo for best related works, a widespread category that sometimes encompasses making-of books, pieces of criticism, and biographies. Fellow nominees included a book on Ursula K. Le Guin's writing, a Hugo Award retrospective, a website that campaigned to sponsor Worldcon memberships for Mexican creators, and Lindsay Ellis' video series on The Hobbit...

The very existence of AO3's nomination was a way of legitimizing fanfiction as a form of expression. But its win validates it even further, particularly in the science-fiction and fantasy community...

ikhider writes: Breukelen, Amsterdam born actor, Rutger Hauer, who played Roy Batty in the 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner and improvised the "tears in the rain" dialogue as his android character died, has too finally passed away last Friday after an illness. His funeral was held on Wednesday, July 24th. Hauer starred in TV since 1969 and then went on to movies like Sin City and Batman Begins, but is best known as Roy Batty, the android built with a four year lifespan who, with fellow androids, desperately wanted an extension. His costars paid tribute via social media. Perhaps we, the fans, can do so with private screenings of one of the Director's Cut of Blade Runner.

"At Comic-Con, Sir Patrick Stewart took to the Hall H stage Saturday afternoon to discuss his new series, Star Trek: Picard," reports CBS News: The series will focus on what caused famed captain and admiral Jean-Luc Picard to leave Starfleet, and his life since.... Patrick Stewart -- who is also an executive producer -- answered questions about the show. "We never know, do we, when our best moment will be. And that is now," Stewart said. "I knew something unusual would happen. I knew I needed to be a part of it."

Stewart has been heavily involved in crafting "Star Trek: Picard" and frequently visits the writer's room... Brent Spiner, who played the character Data on TNG, said there was "no way" he could say no to the opportunity to work with Stewart again....

The show is set 20 years after the events of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" around the year 2399. This sets the series further into the future than any previous Star Trek series. But fans should not expect to see the same Jean-Luc Picard they know from "The Next Generation" series. During the press tour, Kurtzman teased that the show will be very different and "grounded." The series will explore how Picard has changed in that time, making him reckon with the choices he has made. Kurtzman hinted that there are circumstances that have "radically" shifted that have caused the beloved Starfleet admiral to question his life decisions.
The two-minute trailer includes a surprising cameo, and Variety reports that CBS has also committed to two seasons of Star Trek: Lower Decks, an animated series focused on "the support crew serving on one of Starfleet's least important ships." (They also report that Seth MacFarlane announced season 3 of The Orville will be moving from Fox to Hulu.)

Also at Comic-Con, HBO shared the first full trailer for their upcoming Watchmen TV series, a sequel to the original Alan Moore graphic novel. Rolling Stone quotes HBO as saying that Watchmen "takes place in an alternative, contemporary reality in the United States, in which masked vigilantes became outlawed due to their violent methods."

Marvel also revealed that their next Thor movie (Thor: Love and Thunder) will incude both Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman as Lady Thor, and shared footage from their upcoming Black Widow movie. And CNET has a comprehensive rundown (with trailers) of all the DC Comics superhero shows on the CW network, including Arrow, Supergirl, The Flash, Black Lightning, and Batwoman.

An anonymous reader quotes Android Authority: Studios like Disney and NBCUniversal are making preparations to launch their own streaming services, and they are planning to take back their back catalog of films and TV series with them. That's also what's happening with WarnerMedia, the AT&T-owned entertainment group that operates, among many other things, HBO, Warner Bros, and CNN. Recently, the conglomerate announced its own upcoming dedicated streaming service, HBO Max... Unconfirmed reports from Hollywood trade news outlets claim that HBO Max will cost between $16 and $17 a month. The service will be ad-free, although some reports have indicated that WarnerMedia might launch an ad-supported version of HBO Max at some point after the official launch in 2020. If that happens, it's likely the cost to sign up will be much less...

While HBO Max will have quite a lot for subscribers to watch from WarnerMedia's library of content, it will have its own range of original TV shows and movies that will be found exclusively on the streaming service. They will be known as Max Originals. Here's what has been announced for HBO Max so far, which includes a couple of spin-offs from current and upcoming Warner Bros. series:

Dune: The Sisterhood: Based on the classic Dune sci-fi novels by Frank Herbert, this 10-part series will focus on the Bene Gesserit group of women in this universe. Denis Villeneuve, who is directing the upcoming feature film adaptation of Dune, will also direct the pilot episode of the series.

Gremlins -- The Animated Series: The mischievous and destructive creatures from the two Gremlins feature films will return as an animated series on HBO Max...
A beta version of the service may launch before the end of 2019, according to Deadline. The studio's announcement also promised that HBO Max woud also include previously-announced HBO programs, including:

• Stephen King's The Outsider, a dark mystery starring Ben Mendelsohn, produced and directed by Jason Bateman.

• Lovecraft Country, a unique horror series based on a novel by Matt Ruff, written and executive produced by Misha Green, and executive produced by Jordan Peele (Us) and J.J. Abrams (Westworld).

• The Nevers, Joss Whedon's new science fiction series starring Laura Donnelly.

We're reviving an old Slashdot tradition -- the review. Whenever there's something especially geeky -- or relevant to our present moment -- we'll share some thoughts. And I'd like to start with Jonathan Coulton's amazing 2017 album Solid State, and its trippy accompanying graphic novel adaptation by Matt Fraction. I even tracked down Jonathan Coulton on Friday for his thoughts on how it applies to our current moment in internet time...

"When I started work on Solid State, the only thing I could really think of that I wanted to say was something like, 'The internet sucks now'," Coulton said in 2017 in an epilogue to the graphic novel. "It's a little off-brand for me, so it was a scary place to start..."

So what does he think today? And what did we think of his album...?

PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from CNN: Over 300,000 people have signed on to a Facebook event pledging to raid Area 51 in Nevada in a quest to "see them aliens." The event, titled "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," is inviting users from around the world to join a "Naruto run" -- a Japanese manga-inspired running style featuring arms outstretched backwards and heads forward -- into the area. "We can move faster than their bullets," the event page, which is clearly written with tongue in cheek, promises those who RSVP for September 20. The mysterious Area 51 has been the focus of conspiracy theories for decades, and many people think it's where the U.S. government stores its secrets about aliens and UFOs.

Esther Schindler (Slashdot reader #16,185) shared this story from Hewlett Packard's Enterprise blog: Storage is a staple of both science and science fiction, and forms the basis, or a crucial component, of many a piece of speculative fiction... [H]ere are eight past visions of the storage future that either passed their error checks or succumbed to bit rot.

Why store vast quantities of data on a device when you can just slap it into someone's head?
The article acknowledges that in many science fiction stories, data is simply preserved using such primitive technologies as "the written word" and "brute-force [human] memory," as well as ordinary real-world storage technologies like the server room in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, or basic non-cloud-based computers. But there's also wetware -- think "Johnny Mnemonic "-- and the data crystals in Babylon Five.

The article even acknowledges that time Batman beat Mr. Freeze by carving binary code into a wall, giving future generations the recipe for antifreeze.

The long wait is over for sci-fi and horror film buffs: the 1979 classic "Alien" will be released in 4K and HDR for the film's 40th anniversary. The remaster will be available on an UltraHD Blu-ray disc. From a report: 20th Century Fox and partners embarked on an effort to remaster the film in 4K last year, under supervision by Pam Dery and Director Ridley Scott. "Alien" was originally shot on 35mm film, and the remaster was made using the original negative. Remastering older films for the UltraHD era has sometimes proven challenging for studios. In many cases, original film masters have degraded, and 4K on a 65-inch TV is adept at revealing graininess and other flaws that result from aged or damaged film.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via NPR: Netflix announced this week that it has acquired the rights to stream Chinese sci-fi blockbuster "The Wandering Earth," which has already grossed more than $600 million globally and hit number two in the all-time Chinese box office rankings since it was released in theaters Feb. 5. Netflix will translate the movie into 28 languages and release it in more than 190 countries. The movie, based on a short story by Hugo award winner Liu Cixin (author of "Three Body Problem" and "Ball Lighting") is set in a distant future in which the earth is about to be devoured by the sun. Using propulsive engines, humans turn earth into a spaceship and try to launch it out of the solar system and the planet is saved by a Chinese hero (rather than American ones as typically seen in Hollywood sci-fi movies.)

For China's film industry, the release marks a major milestone. "Filmmakers in China see science fiction as a holy grail," Raymond Zhou, an independent critic, told The New York Times. "It's like the coming-of-age of the industry." Two sci-fi movies, "The Wandering Earth" and "Crazy Alien," which is also inspired by Liu's work, topped this Chinese New Year movie season. Inkoo Kang wrote at Slate that the film "understands what American blockbusters are still loath to admit: Responding to climate change will pose infrastructural challenges on a massive order and require drastic measures on a planetary scale. Perhaps it takes a country like China, which is accustomed to a manic rate of construction and grandness of organizational possibility, to seriously consider how dramatically humanity will have to reimagine our ways of life to survive such a catastrophic force."

beaverdownunder quotes Paleotronic: While researching for our magazine we sometimes find nuggets buried by time that have been forgotten by the Internet. This particular nugget was found in the May 1977 issue of Creative Computing. Science fiction author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke's predictions of the future are fascinating, both for what he got right, and what he got wrong.
Quoting Arthur C. Clarke: [W]hat about verbal inputs? Do we really need a keyboard? I'm sure the answer is "Yes." We want to be able to type out messages, look at them, and edit them before transmission. We need keyboard inputs for privacy, and quietness. A reliable voice recognition system, capable of coping with accents, hangovers, ill-fitting dentures and the "human error" that my late friend HAL, the computer from 2001, complained about, represents something many orders of magnitude more complex than a simple alpha-numeric keyboard. It would be a device with capabilities, in a limited area, at least as good as those of a human brain. Yet assuming that the curves of the last few decades can be extrapolated, this will certainly be available sometime in the next century....
Noting that he coined the phrase "Don't commute -- communicate!" Clark adds "We are already approaching the point when it will be feasible -- not necessarily desirable -- for those engaged in what is quaintly called "white-collar" jobs to do perhaps 95 per cent of their work without leaving home. Of course, few of today's families could survive this, but for the moment let's confine ourselves to electronic, not social, technology."

But he wasn't excited about the possibility of telepathy in the future. "I find that my mental processes are so incoherent...that I should be very sorry for anyone at the receiving end."

AmiMoJo quotes the BBC: The next series of Doctor Who won't start until 2020, it's been confirmed. Series 11 ended on Sunday night, but after the festive special on New Year's Day, Jodie Whittaker won't be seen in the Tardis again next year.

Showrunner Chris Chibnall said work on the new series had already begun... The first episode of the series, the first to feature a female Doctor, drew a record audience. It saw the highest launch viewing figures for the sci-fi stalwart in a decade, with 10.9 million people tuning in. The series has been considered a ratings success, with viewing figures above those of the last two series when Peter Capaldi starred in the title role.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Sitting in front of a Converus EyeDetect station, it's impossible not to think of Blade Runner. In the 1982 sci-fi classic, Harrison Ford's rumpled detective identifies artificial humans using a steam-punk Voight-Kampff device that watches their eyes while they answer surreal questions. EyeDetect's questions are less philosophical, and the penalty for failure is less fatal (Ford's character would whip out a gun and shoot). But the basic idea is the same: By capturing imperceptible changes in a participant's eyes -- measuring things like pupil dilation and reaction time -- the device aims to sort deceptive humanoids from genuine ones.

It claims to be, in short, a next-generation lie detector. Polygraph tests are a $2 billion industry in the US and, despite their inaccuracy, are widely used to screen candidates for government jobs. Released in 2014 by Converus, a Mark Cuban-funded startup, EyeDetect is pitched by its makers as a faster, cheaper, and more accurate alternative to the notoriously unreliable polygraph. By many measures, EyeDetect appears to be the future of lie detection -- and it's already being used by local and federal agencies to screen job applicants.

AmiMoJo writes: Japanese broadcaster NHK is launching the world's first 8K TV channel with a special edition of 2001: A Space Odyssey. NHK asked Warner Bros. to scan the original negatives at 8K specially for the channel.

8K offers 16 times the resolution of standard HD, 120 frames per second progressive scan, and 24 channels of sound. NHK is hoping to broadcast the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on the channel.
17 other channels also began broadcasting 4K programming today, according to Japan Times, even though, as Engadget points out, "almost no one has an 8K display, and most of the people who do need a special receiver and antenna just to pick up the signal... Also, HDMI 2.1 hasn't been implemented in any of these displays yet, so just getting the signal from box to TV requires plugging in four HDMI cables."

NHK's channel will broadcast for 12 hours a day, reports the BBC, adding that Samsung already sells an 8K TV for $15,000, and that LG has announced one too, while Engadget reports that Sharp sells one for $6,600.

On Monday, developer Crowbar Collective released the first trailer for Black Mesa: Xen, the final act of its long running remake of Valve's 1998 game Half-Life, which marked its 20-year anniversary on the same day. "The finale of Half-Life put hero Gordon Freeman in an alien world, and Black Mesa: Xen's upgraded graphics and redesign makes the original's muddy palette look vibrant and strange," reports Motherboard. "It looks just as exciting as it did at the time of the original game's release." From the report: When Valve unleashed Half-Life, it changed video games forever. The first person shooter from what was then a relatively unknown company starred a silent scientist beating down alien headcrabs and shooting human Marines in a novel sci-fi adventure. It was a triumph. Shortly after, in 2003, the Crowbar Collective began work on a remake that would come to be known as Black Mesa. Fan communities routinely reimagine their favorite video games, often as modifications, or mods, of the originals. Black Mesa began life as a free mod for Half-Life 2, but grew into a proper remake. Crowbar Collective added new voice work, changed animations, and tweaked the original game in hundreds of ways big and small. Black Mesa: Xen has a target release date of early 2019.

Zorro shares a report from Entertainment Weekly: The first-ever official Star Trek comedy series has been ordered. CBS All Access has greenlit an animated series from Emmy-winner Mike McMahan, a writer on Adult Swim's sensation Rick and Morty The half-hour series is titled Star Trek: Lower Decks and will tackle the Federation from a comedic perspective, focusing "on the support crew serving on one of Starfleet's least important ships." Fans will recognize the Lower Decks title as referencing the name of one of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.