ox may have failed to renew Futurama, but fans of Matt Groening's animated science-fiction comedy can still feed their insatiable desire for all things Bender & Co. by visiting Can't Get Enough Futurama.
The site offers everything fans expect to find, and plenty that they don't. The first stop for newbies (or for anyone who wasn't able to follow Fox's chaotic Futurama scheduling practices, which at last count was everyone) is the episode guide. The guide's broken down
by season, and each episode's listing provides its formal name, production code, air date, fan rating and a brief synopsis. Rounding out the entries are convenient links to related information, including episode reviews, frame grabs and sound clips. The average fan rating—provided by site visitors—is a particularly nice touch, one that other fan sites would do well to emulate.
Like its more popular Simpsons sibling, Futurama is filled with running gags; the site itemizes them under its "Lists and References" category. Included are all of the cartoon's opening subtitles (including "This Episode Has Been Modified to Fit Your Primitive Screen" and "Touch Eyeballs to Screen for Cheap Laser Surgery"), lyrics for Futurama's various songs (like "Robot Hell Bonanza" and "Fry Crack Corn") and the official series timeline. The "Freeze Frame" category has a similar premise, but lists all of the series' in-jokes and bloopers on an episode-by-episode basis.
All of this is good stuff, but it's what folks would expect to find. What they won't expect are guitar tabs for the Futurama theme song, Nokia ring tones, ASCII artwork, Winamp skins, fan-created Flash games, fonts, interactive "choose your own adventure"-type stories, PocketPC themes and a bunch of other extras that die-hard fans will devour faster than Fry chugging a can of Slurm. The quality varies, and some of the games are works in progress, but overall these
eccentric extras are enjoyable tributes.
— Ken Newquist
Site of the Week—July 7, 2003
oetry featuring SF and fantasy themes is flourishing like never before, thanks to the relatively low cost of setting up specialized journals on the Internet. Sidereality is one of the newest of these 'zines, a low-key and attractive site that is gradually building itself into an archive of appealing offbeat poems and related non-fiction.
So far this magazine has published six issues, each filled with a complex range of poems with titles like "Vigils of the Fire," "Down in Tampa, Wine Intoxicated," and "Kali Appears With a Necklace of Flavored Heads." There are reviews, articles and interviews to read on the site, too. And—a mandatory perk with online journals—everything is archived. Each new issue adds depth to the still-evolving identity of Sidereality, while the forums allow readers to engage in conversation about works already published.
For those who like some visuals with their verse, Sidereality features an entire sequence of poems linked to the artwork of Matthew P. Schuster. Schuster's 10 pieces, co-written with poet Michael Arnzen, are entitled "Gentle Monsters," and each is presented with one of his illustrations. Additionally, the cover art for each issue of Sidereality is weird, delicious and thought-provoking—not the point of the magazine, to be sure, but not to be overlooked either.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—June 30, 2003
F fans looking for a new perspective on the literary universe would do well to take a look through the Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy site, an archive of documents and images pertaining, naturally, to Russian SF and the people who write it. The page offers a first-rate opportunity to get to know some writers who aren't the household names of American-British SF—the Strugatsky Brothers, for example, or Marina and Sergey Dyachenko.
The English-language version of this site is a spinoff of a larger Russian archive, but it offers an interested visitor many delights and surprises: translations of stories by Russian authors, links to their Web pages, a couple of interviews and information about the Russian Science Fiction Award. (Check out the photo of the award, a fabulous sculpture that is delightfully ambiguous in its look. Is it a warped computer keyboard? A skyscraper?) The Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy site is a proud sponsor of this award, whose initial list of potential winners is derived from votes submitted by regular visitors to the Web page.
The makers of the site are well aware that they are but one fragment of a written tradition spanning the globe, and their links page is a gateway to SF written by Indian, German, Hungarian and other international authors. They also have listings of some of the better-known genre resources and other Russian SF-themed sites.
Despite a plain-Jane graphic design sensibility, Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy is a heady and entertaining reminder that the SF genre is a vast and exciting place, covering more territory than even the most dedicated fan has time to explore.
—A.M. Dellamonica
Back to the top.
