"We had to broaden the channel to change the misconceptions of the genre... that it was for geeky young men."

Amazing, then, that I know two women once far more into Sci Fi Channel mainstay Battlestar Gallactica than I, at least until the plot took a turn for the sappy, despite the fact that it features both spaceships and the future. And my favorite Sci Fi blog is even edited by a woman.

But of course the channel can always count on those sorts of hard-core fans tuning in, even if the name is disastrously changed to "the Imagination Channel" as once discussed, according to the Times article. In the meantime network executives are trying to build a global mega-brand, and to them the "Sci Fi" in "Sci Fi Channel" is best viewed, as Howe puts it, as merely an advantageous "signpost" amid "the fragmentation of media," albeit one with a "downside" — the downside being that the channel taken at face value, and believed to be sci fi in nature, when in fact it wants to be So Much More, and thus so much less.

[Times]

Diseases ranging from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder will be shown to be caused by infectious agents that take advantage of genetic predisposition, says psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, president of the Treatment Advocacy Center. Researchers will be surprised to find that many of those infectious agents are being transmitted from animals to humans. As a result, it will be uncommon to keep cats, birds or hamsters as pets - but we'll still have dogs around, because they've been "man's best friend" for so long that we've already adjusted to their infectious agents.

International terrorism will be brought under control because governments will realize counterterrorism is primarily a police function rather than a job for the military, says Ronald Noble, the secretary-general of Interpol. Passports and IDs will be linked to a global monitoring system, much as credit cards are today. "People will no longer be able to travel and engage in transactions with anonymity," thanks to surveillance and biometrics, he says. All this will pose "thorny issues" for a post-privacy era.

The outlook for longer life spans is a mixed bag: Kurzweil says the pace of life extension will outrun the passage of years, offering at least the possibility of an indeterminate life span 50 years from now. But trends also point to a decline in average life expectancy, due to the increased incidence of obesity among today's young people, says Wanda Jones, director of the Office on Women's Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Bosh. Don't fret the fatties. Smoke 'em if you got 'em, people. We're all set. [CosmicLog via Digg]

I first noticed this trick last month in a terrible short story in the New Yorker, "Raj, Bohemian." Gripped by recognizable, almost-trendy concepts (the protagonist watches pre-release bootleg movies, gets to hot clubs before "a single mention on a blog" fills it with guys in stripeys, and the whole story revolves around his offense at being targeted by stealth marketers as an "early adopter") I read the whole thing, even as the style devolved into undergrad tripe that, without all the forced relevance, could never have made it into the New Yorker.

Today I saw the same trick in a story promoted on Boing Boing. Hyperbolic sci-fi author Cory Doctorow said the piece ("Mallory" by Leonard Richardson) "reads like the first three paragraphs of Snow Crash, but extended, remixed, and oh, so sweetly." I know, that blurb should have driven me away, but my editor Nick Denton is a fan of cyberpunk so I checked whether it was good enough for Gawker.

It's bad enough for Gawker. I see why Doctorow loved it: while the style was even more cloying than his (which admittedly can be said of all of cyberpunk and its descendant genres), it uses literally ten times the insider references that the Internet's in crowd loves to read. Richardson phrase-drops "NSA data miners," "glitch metal," the habit of pretending to read a friend's blog, and Katamari Damacy all in the first scene. He also writes some of the worst sentences I've seen since freshman year: "Vijay was neither ready nor un-." "He dropped the fake cell phone like a piece of bread he'd just discovered was moldy." "'Stop being such a drama queen,' said Keith. 'It makes us actual queens look bad.'"

While this story does end up better than the New Yorker piece, the first act is almost entirely made of references calibrated to dazzle rather than to truly inform; presumably Doctorow wouldn't have gotten to the rest of the story if he didn't slog through the beginning and find himself perversely (or in his particular case, sincerely) liking the schlock. Like dry popcorn with enough salt, you might finish such a story by force of habit. Trained by blogs, news feeds and TV, you feel like you're learning something just because familiar phrases are flashed at you. You keep looking for a pattern and end up wasting your time.

When concept-dropping invades otherwise good writing, it can cripple a promising talent. Diablo Cody, scolded by some critics for overloading her script with painful references like "honest to blog," still won her Best Screenplay Oscar. The film, with disparate scenes patched together by twee indie music, still got nominated for best motion picture and best direction. While I assume the Academy recognized the more deserving parts of the film — non-clichéd supporting characters well portrayed by skilled actors, a touching story with much redeeming dialog — making allowances for concept-dropping seemed to validate it as a trick for drawing in more easily amused audiences while still entertaining those seeking a truly great film.

Before the awards, Cody had already written another screenplay full of mockable lines. Cody not only borrows specific cultural touchstones but also uses a sickly caricature of real banter. Her method of stealing relevance has expanded to a larger theft of an entire cultural vernacular. One sentence stands out: "I'm a hard-assed, Ford-tough mama bear. It's like, don't y'all touch my daughter. I'll piss on you like Calvin." Here she's almost redeemed the technique, synthesizing a corporate-approved slogan with the bootleg sticker often seen on it. But does the meaning of a Calvin pissing on a Chevy logo really say what Cody's character means? Is taking sides in a brand war analogous to protecting one's young? Or could Cody take out all the referential filler and end up with a better line?

Maybe Cody's producers will pull her back. But the millions of would-be entertainers on YouTube, or writing spec scripts in LA, or opening for Dane Cook, want a hook. And because slapping together some references is so much easier than carefully crafting a story, it's all we'll be left with as all non-referential fiction gets pegged as "too literary."

Image from Penny Arcade

"Inside his dressing-room trailer, the star of the relentlessly bleak Battlestar Galactica washed his hands and apologized again. 'And I can't tell you why I look like this... I can't even tell you whose blood it is.'"

Olmos understands that legions of sci-fi and poli-sci wieners don't want the fun to ever end, but tough titties! "It is difficult to move on, but it is the correct time, the natural pace of the story—there's the beginning, the middle, and now it's time for the end... We have hit so many notes, and now it's time to tie everything up."

Brit Jamie "Apollo" Bamber gets philosophical about it. "The end is in sight, for better or worse... Every time I come to Vancouver now there will be a sort of Proustian element and a Pavlovian response. I'll think of my children being very young here, this stage and set, coming to North America, the sights and sounds. It will all be Battlestar. " [LAT]