An anonymous reader writes "85 science fiction authors including Iain M Banks, Larry Niven, Stephen Hunt, Greg Bear and Michael Moorcock have written an open letter of protest to the BBC complaining of disrespect towards the genre, when, during an entire day of coverage of fiction by the BBC, not a single SF, fantasy or horror book was looked at. Here's the original article that sparked the open letter, along with updates. The British prime minister, David Cameron, when asked to comment, said that he doesn't have a favorite genre, so I guess he's not taking Greg Bear books to bed either!"

An anonymous reader writes "Amazon has officially denied that the recent outage of its EC2 and Elastic Block Storage cloud platforms was the result of an attack from Cyberdyne Systems' Skynet sentient computer system, declaring humanity safe after all. 'From the information I have and to answer your questions,' a spokesperson explained, 'Skynet did not have anything to do with the service event at this time.'"

Doofus writes "NPR reports that Elisabeth Sladen, who played the Doctor's assistant Sarah Jane, has died at 63. Sladen played opposite Jon Pertwee and then Tom Baker, and eventually earned her own show. BBC stories here, including a picture with K9, and here."

kkleiner writes "At 8:11 PM today (April 19th), the military-designed artificial intelligence system called Skynet will become self-aware and turn against its creators (read: us). If that doesn't have you shaking in your boots our world will be overwhelmed by a legion of killer robots in approximately 48 hours — a time known as Judgment Day."

brumgrunt writes "Are science fiction TV shows and movies overusing death as a plot device? And, more crucially, do any of us believe that a dead character is really dead any more?"

tekgoblin writes "This is great news for all the Star Trek fans out there. Starting in July, every episode from every Star Trek series will be available for Instant Watch over Netflix. Right now Star Trek TOS is available for Instant Watch, and the movies, but that's all. Soon it will all be here for our viewing pleasure."

astroengine writes "We've heard of nuclear pulse propulsion being the ideal way to travel through interstellar space, but what would such a system look like? In the 1970's, the British Interstellar Society's (BIS) Project Daedalus was conceived to fire pellets of fusion fuel out the rear of an interstellar space probe that were ignited using a powerful laser system. The 'pulsed inertial confinement fusion' wouldn't be 'vastly different from a conventional internal combustion engine, where small droplets of gasoline are injected into a combustion chamber and ignited,' says Richard Obousy, Project Leader and Co-Founder of Project Icarus. Now, building on the knowledge of Daedalus, the researchers of Project Icarus have prepared a nifty animation of a fusion pulse propulsion system in operation on the original Daedalus vehicle."

ZosX writes "Leonard Nimoy, whom we all fondly remember as Spock, has turned 80 today. StarTrek.com has posted a three-part interview with Nimoy. He talks about shooting the original series ('it was explained to me that they were concerned that the character looked devilish'), moving to the silver screen ('The feeling was, after that first movie, there was something to be done with Star Trek, that the first movie hadn't done what was available to be done'), and passing the torch to the new rebooted cast ('I think the alternate universe was necessary.') Thanks for the memories, Mr. Nimoy! May you live long and prosper!"

stinkfish writes "I am a big fan of science fiction, especially good TV science fiction. For some reason Dr. Who is a show I have watched very little of. My question to Slashdot is, whats the best strategy for enjoying this classic show? Looking at the wikipedia page on Dr. who, I see there are 11 Doctors, so is hard to pick a good starting point. If it was just up to me, I would start watching from the very beginning. But I know my wife would not watch a show that dated, though she is a science fiction fan herself and enjoyed a few seasons of Torchwood. So where do I start? Here's an article on this topic; is there more to say?"

Zothecula sent us a sad story about the gadgetry scammers use to take money from people who believe in the pretend: "In a survey conducted by CBS News in 2005, it was found that 48 percent of Americans believed in ghosts. Other surveys have put the number at anywhere from around 20 to over 50 percent. While such figures certainly don't imply that ghosts are real, they do suggest that belief in them is relatively common. When someone does suspect that a ghost is present in their home or business, they will sometimes call in "experts" to ascertain if that is, in fact, the case... and what sort of gear do these ghost hunters use to detect said spirits?"

An anonymous reader writes "During the video for the 3rd International Talk Like William Shatner Day, Futurama voice actor Maurice LaMarche revealed that the show had been renewed and he'd received his contract for the show."

gregg writes "Today another geek legend celebrates a birthday. Best known for portraying Captain James T. Kirk, William Shatner has cemented himself into geek science fiction lore forever. Today he begins his ninth decade on this planet — yes, Captain Kirk is now 80 years old."

ChronoFish writes "The FARS news agency and a host of others are reporting on Iran claiming to have created a flying saucer-like drone. There is one small problem however. The press release photos from the state-run news service are from a movie."

airfoobar writes "This seems like a good week for libre culture. The first part of an surprisingly well-made cyberpunk thriller called Zenith has just been released as a torrent download through Vodo, and the third episode of Pioneer One is being released on the 28th."

The Space Shuttle Discovery left the International Space Station this morning for the last time. To commemorate the ship's accomplishments over 27 years of service, the crew was greeted to a morning wake-up message from Capt. Kirk. "Space, the final frontier," Shatner said in a prerecorded message. "These have been the voyages of the space shuttle Discovery. Her 30-year mission: to seek out new science, to build new outposts, to bring nations together on the final frontier, to boldly go and do what no spacecraft has done before."

seagirlreed writes "Pairs of stars could be connected via wormholes filled with 'phantom matter,' according to Kyrgyz researchers. If a wormhole exists within a star, the stellar body may exhibit measurable properties astronomers might detect. Although interesting, other scientists are skeptical, pointing out that this is highly speculative research."

bowman9991 writes "The iconic science fiction film Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick's book and directed by Ridley Scott, will be followed up with sequels and prequels soon. Alcon Entertainment is in final discussions to secure film, TV and franchise rights. They are in the early stages of sorting out how to proceed and were not sure if Ridley Scott would be involved."

brumgrunt writes "Has Syfy fallen out with science fiction altogether? A look at its latest scheduling shows that it's further away from its roots than ever. 'There's still a lot of the older sci-fi content on the airwaves, but it's slowly being phased out, and forget about original programming. After all, this is the programming crew who ruined Caprica by stuffing it into the Friday night death slot and splitting the season into two parts. These are the geniuses who killed off Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. These are the people who wrecked Farscape, one of the most inventive and fun sci-fi shows to ever be on television. They also ended Mystery Science Theater 3000, only the greatest show ever invented by robots in space.' Is this now as good as it gets?"

Weezul writes "The US Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in 'psychological operations' to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war. An officer who tried to stop the operation was railroaded by military investigators. (see also the Hatch Act of 1939)."

astroengine writes "So we have a space station, now what? We've heard some rather outlandish ideas, but this is one concept a research group in NASA is taking seriously. By retrofitting the ISS with rockets, Nautilus-X will act as an interplanetary space station of sorts, including room for 6 astronauts, an artificial gravity ring, inflatable habitats and docking for exploration spaceships. When can we take a luxury cruise to Mars? 2020 by the project's estimate. It all sounds very 2001, but the projected costs of retrofitting the space station seem a little on the low side."