Site of the Week -- June 1, 1999
f time travel will exist, it does exist now. And if it does exist, it's a
sure bet that the folks from the future will be paying The Time Travel
Institute a visit.
The Institute--equal parts spoof and serious time travel discussion--is run by the brilliant and "quite mad" Dr. VonSchnelling. He conducts (has
conducted, will conduct?) time travel experiments with the help of his tame
vampire penguins. Based on these experiments, he's come up with several
time travel theories, which the site illustrates using shows like Quantum
Leap and The Terminator.
The site doesn't take itself or its speculations too seriously, though. After explaining one theory, VonSchnelling says: "You have just exploded zee
universe. Zat is not good."
Meanwhile, over on the discussion board, fans thrash out their own time
travel theories while hobnobbing with alleged visitors from the 22nd
century. The Institute could stand to expand its horizons--reviews of
temporal paradoxes would be nice, as would references to time travel in
books--but overall this is a great site to spend some time visiting.
-- Kenneth Newquist
Site of the Week -- May 24, 1999
ntil now, the secret hope of most science fiction fans--to discover an alien civilization--has been impossible. But anyone with a home computer can join in the search for extraterrestrial life thanks to the SETI@home project.
Based on a small piece of shareware distributed by the University of California-Berkeley, SETI@home provides thousands of space enthusiasts with a way to help scour the skies for alien transmissions. Once downloaded onto a participant's computer, the program grabs a small chunk of data collected by a radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. The program runs as an unobtrusive screensaver whenever the user's computer is idle, analyzing radio waves and then sending the processed files back to Berkeley's servers. The program can run on Windows 95/98, Macintosh, and Unix computers, while versions for other operating systems are planned.
The Web site for SETI@home--which will serve as an online base camp during the program's two-year run--hosts FAQs and highlights of notable findings. It's a grassroots project that the public appears to be starving for, judging by the nearly 300,000 users who have signed up so far.
-- Kenneth Newquist
Site of the Week -- May 17, 1999
ll the attention being paid to George Lucas and the Star Wars
series hasn't spilled over onto his first film, the dark science fiction
thriller THX 1138. The THX 1138 page is one the few THX Web sites that are out there, but like its namesake it's been a little
neglected.
The site has some nice features. There's a synopsis of the movie, background tidbits, and a list of THX in-jokes. The host also tracked down some fun images of the female lead getting her head shaved in preparation for her part, though some other image files came up not found during a recent visit. There's an "exclusive" interview with William Loughborough, who dubbed the voice for one of the robot officers in the film. The interview is interesting but odd. (Q: What was a day on the set like? A: I never saw the set. Q: How did THX help your acting career? A: I'm not an actor, I'm a scientist. And so on.)
The THX 1138 page is good for basic background on Lucas's debut
feature. For more, Web surfers will have to wait for promised upgrades.
-- Mark Wilson
