We live in the age of prequels, trilogies and spinoffs.

The new Star Trek movie will be a prequel. All new Star Wars trilogy is a prequel. The new Batman movie is also a prequel. Terminator 4 will be the start of a trilogy. By the way, it will also be a prequel, but a special one, that takes place in the future.

Actually, this is an interesting idea. In Terminator 1, Kyle Reese  was sent back to the past by his leader, John Connor, to protect Sarah Connor and help conceive John Connor who later will be his leader and send him back through time to … whatever. A real paradox.

In T2, a Terminator (T-1000, Robert Patrick) was sent back to kill John Connor (and, of course, Sarah Connor), who was defeated by Sarah Connor and his son, John Connor, who sent back the friendly Terminator (T-101, Arnold “Governor of California” Schwarzenegger) to protect himself… whatever. Another paradox. By the way, Cyberdine was also destroyed, so Judgement Day should not happen anymore. Another paradox. But in Hollywood everything is possible.

In T3, a Terminator was sent back by Catherine Brewster to protect John Connor and Catherine Brewster from the T-X, the Terminator-terminator… and Judgement Day still comes.

So, in T4 we reach back to the roots of the Terminator problem. This makes T4 a prequel to the other 3 movies. But this prequel is special: everything that happens takes place AFTER the 3 previous movies. I mean, in the future. But this is still a prequel. Another paradox?

The Terminator franchise also has a spinoff. It’s called The Sarah Connor Chronicles, it’s a TV show and will air early next year.

One of my favourite TV shows, Battlestar Galactica, will also have a spinoff, called Caprica. And it is also a prequel (Things are getting worse… a spinoff prequel, a prequel trilogy, a spinoff prequel TV show… I’m starting to lose it!). Caprica would take place more than half a century before the events that play out in Battlestar Galactica. The people of the Twelve Colonies are at peace and living in a society not unlike our own, but where high technology has changed the lives of virtually everyone for the better.  But a startling breakthrough in robotics is about to occur, one that will bring to life the age-old dream of marrying artificial intelligence with a mechanical body to create the first living robot: a Cylon.

X-men also gets two spinoff movies - both of them prequels. One of them is called X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and tells us about Logan / Wolverine’s younger years and his relationship to Mr. Stryker. The other one is called Magneto, and tells us about the younger years of Erik Lehnsherr, a (supposedly) Jewish boy who loses both parents in a Nazi camp during WWII (at least this is what X-Men movie #1 has showed us years ago). Both movies should be interesting. Both movies will be launched in 2009.

So, after lots of prequels, more will come. But this doesn’t make them less valuable. We still expect them with the same enthusiasm and anticipation…

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Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…

One of the books I recently read was William Gibson’s Neuromancer. This is the first part of “the Sprawl trilogy“. Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive (I’ve read all of them) are the most impressive presentation of the Cyberspace I’ve ever read - a vivid, colorful world of computer networks in contrast with the real world, which is “like an experiment in social Darwinism designed by a bored researcher who kept his thumb permanently on the fast forward button”.

Case, the “artiste”, is a crippled ex-console cowboy. He tried to doublecross those who hired him, and they punish him in the worst possible way: they burn his nervous system using a mushroom poison and make him incapable of jacking into the Matrix (gee, I wonder where the Wachowsky brothers took their movie title from…).

He would die alone in the Sprawl if Armitage and his unlikely team (Molly, the Walkin’Razor, Peter Riviera the cyber-jester) wouldn’t offer him a way out of this situation, in return for his services as a hacker. So, Case starts his journey up the gravity well and into Cyberspace to do the bidding of Wintermute, an AI who desires to be more…

A real cyberpunk trilogy, written by a man who hasn’t seen a computer in his life before writing the second part of it. I would recommend it to every Internet user and every Science Fiction fan in  the world.

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Throughout time, there have been individuals who posess the power to teleport (or Jump). They have used their abilities for personal gain, to escape from their enemies and to change the course of history.The ability to Jump is a genetic anomaly that has existed for centuries and those who possess this gift have a freedom that most people can’t begin to comprehend. They can transport themselves anywhere in the world at any time, for any reason.

Experience and emotion play a key role in the affect of a Jump and depending on the Jumpers state of mind at the time, it can cause significant damage. Jumpers Jump for the first time at age 5. As they refine their gift, the Jump becomes more fluid. However, even the most skilled Jumper will cause environmental damage when in danger, angry or in a heightened emotional state during a Jump.
When a Jumper teleports between two places he/she opens up a rift in the fabric of space-time. The visible result of this process is a Jumpscar, an otherworldly “scar” that hangs in the air for several seconds, like smoke from a cigarette.
Jumpscars are dangerous and will shred anything or anyone who tries to touch one. A bullet fired near a Jumpscar will behave unpredictably, which is why Paladins do no use conventional weapons around Jumpers. However, it is possible for one Jumper to follow another Jumper through his Jumpscar. They can transport themselves anywhere in the world at any time, for any reason.

You probably wonder what this guy is writing about. Well, we’re going to find out in February 2008. Some of us, more fortunate, already know: the movie Jumper (starring Hayden “Darth Vader” Christensen) is the adaptation of Steven Gould’s 1992 novel with the same title.

As Mr. Gould writes, his book was on the list of most banned books in America, between 1990 and 1999. And, considering it has appeared in 1992, is quite a performance. But this does not make it a bad book: Jumper received good reviews and was on the Compton Crook Award Final Ballot (an award for first novels.) It was second place in the Locus Poll for best first novel of 1992. It was also on the American Library Association Best Book List, YA division, the International Teacher’s Association’s Reccomended Reading List, and the Pacific Northwest Reader’s Association YA Award Final Ballot.

Let’s hope the movie will be as controversial and exciting as the book.

Jumper (the movie) is coming to the big screens in February.

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