Why I Sci-Fi!

Baymax is Hiro's best friend! Image Source Big Hero 6-- now an Academy Award Winning film-- was one of my favorite movies of 2014. It’s positive messages and super cute characters made for a really good pick-me-up movie (...if you can get through some of the sad bits in the first half of the film). What absolutely makes the movie is the protagonist's robotic friend Baymax. This is definitely a feel-good movie that leaves you wanting your own personal robot sidekick. Baymax is a medical assistance robot who looks like a giant fluffy cloud. He’s inflatable, gives great hugs, and is generally awesome in a million ways. What’s really cool about Baymax, though, is that he was based off of a real robotic arm being developed by a Carnegie Mellon robotics team lead by robotics expert Christ Atkeson. This team is working on inflatable robots with a flexible inner skeleton. These robots will be perfect for the medical world-- their softness will reduce the risk of accidentally in...

Guys. Guys, it's here.   It's the teaser-trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens! I've been a die-hard Star Wars fan since I saw the original trilogy as a kid. My parent's we big fans when it originally came out, and so it just seemed obvious to take us to see them all in theaters when they were rereleased in the 90s. While the "new" Star Wars prequel movies were, in my opinion, disasters, I have high hopes for this new movie through Disney. Here's why: Look what Disney's done with its recent Marvel movies! They're great!  The actors from the original trilogy are back-- including Han Solo. Han Solo is definitely on my top 10 favorite sci-fi characters of all time list (...that sounds like a great idea for another blog post!). No Jar-Jar. At least... I'm assuming there will not a be another Jar Jar. That was awful. Andy Serkis is in it! If you don't know about Andy, he's the guy who plays Gollum in the Lord of the Rings ...

This is Ray Bradbury-- he's my favorite science fiction author. Image Source Hello, and welcome to Why I Sci-Fi! Science Fiction has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. The Oxford dictionary defines sci-fi as "fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets."  Call me a nerd, a geek-- whatever you want to call me-- it won't stop a love this strong! When I read a book, it's usually science fiction. When I watch tv, play a video game, write creatively... you got it-- sci-fi! My love for this genre comes from a love of speculation. What will the future of humanity be like? How will we solve, or complicate, the problems of our current world? When do I get to visit Mars? Science and research can only tell us so much in regard to the answers to these questions-- sometimes we have to look to our imaginations to c...