t's one thing to be able to know how to speak Klingon—it's another thing entirely to be able to write it. Understanding this, the crew behind Tommy of Escondido's Alien Fonts Page set out to recreate the extraterrestrial alphabets of a half-dozen different science-fiction universes.
The site is divided into sections for Star Trek, Babylon 5 and "Other SF Alien Fonts," the last of which contains fonts from Star Wars, Dune, Stargate SG-1, and even V. Each is available for download as a Windows Truetype font; Mac users will need to follow one of the site's links to a Truetype converter to use the fonts on their machines.
The fonts are easy to download and use, and should provide an excellent resource for those seeking a new look for their fan Web site, or who want to make particularly effective handouts for their SF-themed role-playing game.
The largest of the site's collections is dedicated to Star Trek. It holds four series' worth of fonts—28 fonts in all—and range from popular species like Klingon, Vulcan and Romulan to more obscure ones such as Tkon (seen in TNG's "The Last Outpost" episode) and Nyrian (from Voyager's "Displaced"). Each font is drawn from canon sources, be it an official source book like The Star Trek Encyclopedia or the original source episode. Occasionally the creators had to ad-lib a bit, but even then they tried to keep their modifications as close to the source material as possible.
Equally impressive is the Babylon 5 section, which holds 20 fonts and covers every major language in the B5 universe. There's Narn, Minbari, Vorlon, Shadow and even B5 wingdings! As with the Star Trek fonts, most of it is based on canon sources, and the parts that aren't are clearly identified as such.
— Kenneth Newquist
Site of the Week—December 23, 2002
cience fiction and pop music go together like Lennon and McCartney, like Martians and invasions. Both are 20th-century inventions, upwellings of non-academic creative impulses meant to appeal to a wide range of consumers in a flourishing marketplace of trends and ideas. The practitioners of both forms are often self-taught, and sometimes geniuses. Both modes of expression paradoxically advocate ceaseless change while at the same time endlessly reworking older tropes and styles. And both pop music and SF go through boom-and-bust cycles, golden and silver ages alternating with leaden ones. It's no surprise to find plenty of SF writers who love popular music, and scads of popular musicians who embrace SF.
Documenting this connection has never occupied many scholars. In John Clute's Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, you'll find a pretty good section on this linkage, under "Music." But for an even more complete catalog of musical works influenced by SF, why not turn to Rich Kulawiec's SF References in Music list? (The corresponding catalog of musical references in SF awaits its creator.) This is the most bare-bones site you can imagine: simply a long scrollable file of alphabetized band and performer names. Under each entry are listed relevant works of SF-tinged music, along with insightful and often witty commentary by Kulawiec. Of course you'll encounter such well-known items as Jefferson Starship's Blows Against the Empire. But did you ever run across the Swedish band Adolphson & Falk, with their hit "Control is Flashing Blue"? Or what about National Health, whose "Tenemos Roads" is about "a war on Mercury"?
Be warned, however: This site could easily bankrupt you, as you scramble to add hundreds of intriguing CDs to your collection!
— Paul Di Filippo
Site of the Week—December 16, 2002
celebration of B movies on the Web, Badmovies.org is an almost overwhelming source of information on flicks with a high cheese factor. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the detailed film summaries on this site cover SF and horror pictures, giving genre fans a long list of delights to
explore, from The Abominable Dr. Phibes to Zarkorr! The Invader.
The bulk of Badmovies.org's content is composed of what it calls movie reviews, but the term review is something of a misnomer. The site's creators do not content themselves with offering their bluntly honest opinions of cinematic greats like Fiend Without a Face or Humanoids from the Deep. In addition to detailed write-ups on the characters and plot of a film, they provide screencaps, sound clips, a minute-by-minute account of things to watch for and sometimes theme songs, too. For most films, there is even a tongue-in-cheek list of things the reviewer learned from watching the movie. (A sample lesson derived from The Angry Red Planet: "If it looks like a man-eating plant, then it probably is a man-eating plant.")
Badmovies.org also has interviews with a number of B-movie directors and actors, a lively message board, a beautifully indexed links area and even a T-shirt for site fans. Its news section is up to date and provides inside dirt on upcoming B-flick releases, studio gossip and more. Truly a labor of love, the site will absolutely delight any B-movie fan who isn't already a devoted visitor.
— A.M. Dellamonica
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