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Episode 253 was a bit strange today.  But all in all, I think it came out as fun enough!  First, you have to hear this new song I found on youtube from Your Favorite Martian called Club Villain.  What a fun song, and it name drops about any villains you can recall!  Plus it will just keep your feet tappin.

Stories are good this week.  I remembered that it had been awhile since we had a Dark  InSpectre story from Jason Kahn so I corrected that error and played episode 10.  Inspector Garrett has to deal with more than just ghosts and corrupt politicians but we begin to see more of Jack’s past.  Something very wrong is buried deep but we are beginning to see that Jack’s interest in the “quad’s” is very very complicated….

Our second story is part four of David Steffen’s “the Utility of Love”  follows Dorothy and The Tin Man as they try to carry out the quest the Wizard set them to.  Author Steffen again uses deft control of his plot to bring us further along the convoluted path using many of the images we thought we knew in truly inventive and striking ways.  The end of the tale is drawing nearer, but that doesn’t mean that there are not many twists still to come.

From the blog  MDA of Canada may start a gas station in space?  No Ordinary family may come to a very ordinary end.  ABC isn’t talking but have they canceled our favorite superpower family?  Corning put together this video called “A Day Made Of Glass,” which is a very inventive short on all the devices that might one day be as common as the cell phone is now.  All these high tech devices have one thing in common, they use lots of glass.  NASA is reporting that Messenger, the first probe ever to orbit the planet Mercury, has made a successful orbital insertion and is now Mercury’s first ever artificial Sat.!   There is no question that last week’s earthquake in Japan did a great deal of damage, however some of effect are not that apparent but I can guarantee that they are every bit as mind bending!  And finally I take a break and watch some American animation.  I do a  review of the animated movie Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.

All in all not a bad episode, even though the start was a bit rough.  Enjoy!

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Beam Me Up episode 248 here we go!  Going to keep it short and sweet this week kiddies, Daddy is running out of steam.  It goes without saying that we almost took off a week the way things were looking!   Anyway, This week I start with Jason Kahn’s excellent serialized novel Dark InSpectre.  Episode number nine on tap today and you won’t be disappointed.    Our last story this week is part one of Nancy Fulda’s excellent  self discovery tale Knowing Neither Kith nor Kin.   It is truly excellent work from an excellent author.

From the blog

The Japanese space agency is going fishing…..oh yeah,  will the shuttles still fly?,  Its been 40 years since Apollo 14 landed and can neutron stars make some really exotic material?  possibly…..

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Beam Me Up episode 245 doesn’t hold back this week.  I open with a new song to the show.  I found a music video of Nico Touches the Wall doing Diver.  This cut has been the opening to Naruto Shippuden’s newest season and has plenty of energy which I thought might go over well.

My first story is another in the series  of Dark InSpectre stories.  Jason Kahn continues to thoroughly entertain with this series.  The final story is part one of Erin Cashier’s heart breaking Chinvat Bridge.  Part one really sets the stage for next week, but I think you will find the imagery and characters totally believable.  Be warned though, part 1 and part 2 do contain some adult language.

And from the Beam Me Up blog at http://beamEup.blogspot.com:  I review the movie Avatar, the Last Air-bender, from director M. Night Shyamalan.  This movie follows the animated series pretty closely which is probably a good thing as there isn’t really much going for it.  Paolo Bacigalupi has added to his haul of awards. Paolo’s YA novel, Ship Breaker, has won the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award.  If you thought quantum Entanglement and spook behavior at a distance was mind warping then wait until you read the article about the same effect being used for spooky behavior over time!  Oh yeah, there is something about the quantum math that says quantum tele-portation to the future is possible!  And for some really heated discussion.  One of our article submitters has sent in an article called The 10 Most Technophobic Movies and I want to tell you they are still sending in comments!

Check it out!  It’s all good – Beam Me Up episode 245

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Episode 241 of Beam Me Up on a fine Christmas after noon. Most sane people probably wouldn’t be here in the studios, but you know how dedicated I am! Well decenting voices to the contrary, I think we have a great episode this week!

Two serializations this week! Our first story is Dark InSpectre #7 from writer Jason Kahn. Second is the continuing antic of Parvo future pest – meister of Pest – world in episode 4 of Red Robot from the talented pen of Colin P. Davies and the off the hook production talents of Cyber Wizard production. This story keeps getting better and better each episode.

This week’s blog entries at the Beam Me Up blog at http://wrfrbeameup.blogspot.com do not disappoint either. I review the animated movie Batman: Under the Red Hood which may not match the animation and production values of movies like How to Train Your Dragon but still should be a treat for the Batman fans. The plot fits well into the existing mythology surrounding Batman. Oh I have got to thank Boing Boing for pointing out this next gem. There I found a link to the top 10 most popular posts of the year. Funny research, news articles what have you. The are weird oh so very weird, strange and wildly funny. From an article on the contraceptive qualities of polyester to possibly the strangest case hysteria in a medical clinic.

An article that I didn’t really have time to do anything but mention it, is a post from a new contributor. When Science Fiction Pushes the Boundaries of Science posted by contributing writer: Beatrice Owen.

This is a well thought out piece which deals with science pushing science fiction as well as the reverse. Interesting read.

That and a musical selection in the spirit of the season! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

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Welcome once again to Beam Me Up.  This weeks episode is show 235.  Not a big week in science news, however I do think I make up for it in the stories that I play this week.  Our first story this week is the continuing Dark inSpectre series from author Jason Kahn.   In episode six, psychic inspecter Jack Garrett is haunted in the real and the metaphoric sense.   Garrett continues to put himself in situations that can cause great physical and psychological damage.  As he gets closer to the cause of some gruesome murders he finds that he is in danger of losing his life or worse – his mind.  The last story this week is part one of an Adam Chase story from Amazing Stories 1957, Home is where you left it.  In this story, Steven Cantwell returns to his childhood home planet after years away on Earth.  He finds the village where he grew up recently deserted and the communal well poisoned.   Steve tracks down the residents of the village, who had abandoned everything and headed into the desert in an attempt to cross it and get to safety before the planet’s native inhabitants discover their whereabouts.  Steve also finds out that the natives are not the only ones that are a danger to the villagers and ultimately may bring death to them all!

From the Beam Me Up blog at wrfrbeameup.blogspot.com, I finally got a chance to see the restored version of Fritz Lang’s silent movie classic Metropolis.  With more than a forth of the movie restored, the movie takes on a very different tone.  Many of the scenes, that were edited out, are
so integral to  the film’s plot that the movie actually takes on a completely different meaning when viewed as Lang had intended.  It really is a must see.   Steven Davis mashed together scenes from several movies to create a fan made movie trailer for a movie possibility -Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.  If you enjoy Card’s Ender Wiggins stories than you will be wowed by this great effort!   Scientists don’t fully understand the dynamics however,  astronomers working with data from the Fermi space telescope were able to detect two enormous structures extending 25k light years above and below the galactic plane of our Milky Way galaxy.  The gamma ray globes may be very young, just several million years old and may have been formed by infalling mass on the galaxies super black hole at the center.  But with the odd shape and no evidence of a continuing jet, much more research needs to be done.  Sean Wainsteim created a very futuristic music video for the band You Say Party’s song, Lonely Lunch.  Wainsteim uses the crush of humanity as well as the constant noise and color mixed in with some of the weirdest sci-fi outfits to make a really attention grabbing science fiction short.  And AntipodeanSF issue 149 is online, and has to be one of the best collection of Australian flash fiction to date.

That’s what is in-store on this week’s podcast episode 235.  The hour goes by fast.

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Beam Me Up episode 230 is fast and seasonal this week.   Our first piece is is a new episode in the Dark Inspectre Series by Jason Kahn  Things are just not going well at all for our favorite  mind reading inspector.  Seems he managed to garner a good beating on his last outing but far from giving up is right back in the mix, as soon as he is able to walk that is…. and our last story this week is a new story from A.K. Sykora called Mega-Chicken!  Mz Sykora for those of you that don’t follow the podcast, is a very talented writer from Germany who has created some of the most memorable fiction for Beam Me Up.  Stories like Don’t Mess With My SSTO, Irresistible and the Coming of the Arbaries has created a venue set in present day New York where indigent Tony Baggs becomes mother to a most unusual feathered friend in part one of Mega-chicken.  Plant your tongue firmly in your cheek and prepare for the funnier side of alien invasion…..

From the blog this week, I review the movie directed, Produced and Written by Jamin Winans called INK.  A dark tale of loss, pain, failure, mystery and redemption.  For an independent and low budget project, well to be honest, even a large budget it is a remarkable and entertaining movie.    Next up was the IG Nobel award, an American parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October for ten achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” Organized by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research….  stuff like swearing helps lessen pain?  or using rc helicopters to collect infected whale snot, oh and it gets much much worse!  Lets just say that the short nosed fruit bat has it made!  Talk about audience participation!  How about an interactive stage play that turns a whole theater into Apollo mission control for the infamous mission 13. It is being held in Nelson, New Zealand, during the Nelson Arts Festival!  NASA wants to explore Mars this time with a rocket plane dubbed ARES (or the Aerial Regional-Scale Environmental Surveyor), total mission time will be 2 hours, it will be released high in the Martian atmosphere and cover a thousand miles while using high resolution camera gear it would give us the best low altitude.  SyFy has reupped Haven for a second 13 episode season!  and finally what has to be the best proof of concept for the free/open source 3D creation suite Blender is a short animated film called Sintel.  The film may be short on time however it was long on plot.  A totally cute and heart rending  story very cleverly done.  So proof of concept or not, its worth watching.

I think you will find episode 230 every bit as fun to listen to as it was for me to do!  I hope you join us.

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This week on episode 227 of The Beam Me Up show:  I open this week with the song by Kokia   from the second season of the anime series Gunslinger Girl called  “Tatta Hitotsu no Omoi”.   You have to really watch the series to see how this song is a perfect fit for Gunslinger Girl.

Our first story this week is episode four of the Dark Inspectre series by Jason Kahn.  There is no question that Jason has painted a dark milieu for his characters to live in and this week is no exception.  Things continue to go from bad to worse for  telepathic inspecter Jack Garrett.

My pet peve for the week was another whole slew of wrasllin on tap with the sy – fy channel.  I thought we were going to get a reprieve when the present series ended, but no….the newest adds were for Ultimate Smack down on Sy Fy.  Yeah, I lost my composure a bit when I heard that.  I am willing to bet that the Ys in Sy Fy is for YEAH!  I will leave the S and F to your imagination, but I can bet they don’t stand for Science and Fiction anymore.

From the blog:

Rumor has it that Gemma Arterton, of Prince of Persia fame, might be Ridley Scott’s choice for the heroine in his latest project in the Alien franchise.

Alexander Semenov has created what he titled Transformers test film one.  This is a self made “Transformer” short that is damn funny and clever.  Though a bit rough around the edges, it has that touch of reality that might just come from two guys with too much free time and access to some very convincing technology.

Amanda, of Books of Amanda Land blog, sends us a link for her review of Neal Stephenson’s “Diamond Age, or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer.”

According to a recent  article I read in Boing Boing, NASA has somewhat of a dirty secret when it come to astronauts in fact and fingernails in particular.

In other news, AK Sykora has a new story out and has offered it to us in a three part series.  I can’t give away to much yet, but in reading the story, it is quite possibly one of the best we have run by her.   Other stories by Mz. Sykora were Irrasistable, Coming of the Abaries, Don’t mess with my SSTO and others.  I certainly am looking forward to her newest!

Out last story this week is a strange tale called Kifli by Rose Lenberg, and read by CrystalWizard of Cyberstudios Audio online.  It is an EXCELLENT read and I think you will love the interaction between the mother and daughter and a most unusual delivery service!

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This week on Beam Me Up episode 221:

Episode 3 of the Dark Inspectre from Jason Kahn. I review Mushi shi the anime series and live action movie. Webisodes review ARK on Hulu and Ben Browder’s new project. And what has to be the most bizare aid to child-birth ever!

I close this week with a really cute story from Mary Robinette Kowal called The Clockwork Chickadee. Plus webisodes in general.

We are taking ride close to the weird side, so take your reality meds now, its time for Beam Me Up

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Episode 217 I think you will find fast moving enough.

First we have episode 2 of the Dark Inspectre series by Jason Kahn. We start to see a bit more of Jason’s near future world he has constructed for his telepathic cop.

From the blog, I review the CD anime series Lain and a hugely entertaining short on you tube called The Pro plus more from the blog

Finally a tense story of discovery out amongst the stars: I play part one of Jeff Carlson’s Long Eyes

Strap in as the Star Ship BMU lifts off to explore the far reaches of reality….  It’s time for Beam Me Up!