overing brand-new shows and long-running SF news stories with equal panache, SF Overdrive works hard to maintain its claim to being "America's Premier SF Talk Show." Thanks to the miracle that is the Internet, fans outside this program's broadcast range can still tune in to episodes via streaming audio or downloaded media files, catching the latest interviews, commentary and features.
The SF Overdrive Web page itself is a slapdash affair, ugly in its design sensibility and difficult at times to navigate. It forces visitors to sift for content—but what turns up, with some effort, is a wide range of serious and tongue-in-cheek articles. The page's lone op-ed piece (visitors are invited to submit more) discusses the emergence of graphic novels as an art
form. There are reviews of games, DVD releases, movies and comics; in addition, the columns section contains goodies like a discussion of the state of the aging Hubble Space Telescope.
The reading on offer here is secondary, though, and the Web page's clunky design is forgivable, too—given that this site is primarily intended as a gateway to the SF Overdrive program. The show's broadcast schedule and downloads are its most prominently features, and the audio clips are packed with interesting interviews and commentary. SF Overdrive is all about listening—its thought-provoking radio content makes it an ideal, informative and low-key companion.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—June 1, 2004
achyon TV is a quarterly webzine devoted, as the name implies, to SF television. Run by fans in the United Kingdom, it covers all the programs a casual visitor might expect: from Doctor Who and Farscape to U.S. programs like Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Enterprise.. What makes this site different from the dozens of other fanzines and SF news services on the web? Simply this: The Tachyon TV crew doesn't wait for news about a favorite show to come to them. Instead, they'll happily invent it—and the more outrageous, the better.
The result is a long and hilarious cache of news items covering topics like the end of Angel, potential episodes for a no-budget show airing on the BBC (If ... Logan Hadn't Run), and false spoilers for new Doctor Who episodes. Along with the actual articles are sidebars with snappy headlines—quick and amusing sound bites too small in scope to rate an entire fabricated story.
Other features of Tachyon TV include a captioning contest, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan page, a newly inaugurated area devoted to lampooning bad TV commercials, a Doctor Who of the Month photo and a blog filled with irreverent TV news and reviews. The star attraction of the page, though, may well be its "Karaoke with Kosh Naranek" section. Here, the mysterious alien from Babylon 5 provides readers with the lyrics for a host of TV-themed filk songs. Visitors can download the tune of any given song (for "Like a Vorlon," for example, the tune is Madonna's "Like a Virgin") they would like sing along with. Most of the songs are B5-themed, but there is a trio of Doctor Who titles, pieces like "Gallifrey," which is set to the tune of the Bee Gees hit "Tragedy." This section could use some good flash graphics to up its visual humor quotient—it cries out for an animated boogie-down Kosh—but even so, browsing through the lyrics will give visitors a hearty chuckle.
Cheeky and cheerful, Tachyon TV is packed with an infectious but irreverent fondness for all televised SF.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—May 24, 2004
ccording to site owners Jim and Allen Richardson, "gonzo" science is a fusion, combining the rigorous thinking of the skeptics with more progressive and iconoclastic viewpoints. What does that mean in layman's terms? To judge by the Richardson brothers' Gonzo Science site, it means adding just a squeeze of Scully-style scientific restraint to the mix before having as much credulous fun as possible with the wildest fringe theories alternate science can dig up.
Gonzo Science is an archive of articles on topics ranging from Altered States to UFOs. Within these categories, visitors can read up on alternatives to the Big Bang theory or plasma physics (these would be under the heading of "Cosmology/Astrology"), or perhaps click on "Heretical Biology" to learn more about the idea that life on Earth began in space.
A similar indexing system holds sway in the extensive "Gonzo Links" section, a jumping-off point for researchers interested in odd and unexplained phenomena, whether it be the Kennedy assassination or Marian apparitions.
This Web page is an eclectic mix, ricocheting through a range of subjects without ever probing into any of them very deeply. While pointing out gaps in what conventional science can explain, and offering some interesting alternate theories, the site's authors never go to any great effort to substantiate their claims. As a result, Gonzo Science makes perfect break-time browsing, giving visitors a fast-track escape from the mundane world, into another whose possibilities—if sometimes ludicrous—are infinite.
— A.M. Dellamonica
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