8 Science Fiction Marathons To Get You Through The Holidays!

Holiday breaks can be tough on TV — there are only so many times you can watch A Christmas Story. So we piled up all the best marathons to help you though this season.

Monday:

ABC has the gruesome green ogre lined up with all his buddies for Shrek the Halls on ABC at 8 PM. Fiona and Shrek take the kids to celebrate the holidays but Donkey, Puss-in-Boots and other friends keep getting in the way. It’s amazing that Donkey hasn’t been turned into glue yet, given how many ways he finds to annoy Shrek. The original cast returns for this special. Read more …

Can a Robot Consent to Have Sex with You?

It’s a truism in adult science fiction that humans of the future will have sex with robots. But can a robot really consent to have sex when it’s been programmed?

Under the law, the difference between an act of sex and an act of assault hinges on one idea: consent. If a person agrees to have sex with you, you’re having sex. If they don’t agree, or actively disagree, it’s a crime. Obviously there are gray areas, and that’s why rape trials exist - in the best cases, such trials are intended to determine whether consent was given.

But what about robots? Do you think the blondie bot in Cherry 2000 was really capable of giving consent to have sex with her human boyfriend? Or did her programming simply force her to always have sex, whether she wanted to or not? And what about the Romeo Droid in Circuitry Man, or the Sex Mecha in AI, who live entirely to sexually please women, even when those women are abusing them or putting them in danger?

Then there’s the opposite problem, which Ekaterina Sedia tackles in her recent novel Alchemy of Stone. Her main character is a robot whose creator built her without genitals. Even when she wants to have sex, her body makes it impossible for her to consent in a recognizable way (though she does manage to figure out a technical workaround). Read more …

The Ancient Maya Predicted Bicycles and VCRs

If you need a hoot, check out 2012: Science or Superstition, all about the ancient Mayan prophesy that the world ends in 2012. Which apparently has much to do with VCR clocks.

As our “experts” tell us, the Earth was created for a billion people on bicycles, not 7 billion in SUVs. Wow, really? Good to know that biking to work was all part of why the Earth was created.

Even better is knowing, as our second expert explains, that ancient Mayan prophesies can be explained with references to what happens to VCR and microwave clocks after a power outage. Seriously, I love that this guy tells us so seriously that he’s talked to Mayan shamans, and they explain this massive galactic eclipse as being like a VCR clock. Really? Because the VCR clock blinking 12:00 forever does sound like an apocalypse. Especially because everything is Blu-Ray now, so I won’t have any movies to watch after the world ends. I really want to know what the Shamans make of DVRs. Read more …