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If you're wondering about the next Star Trek movie, the only thing you need to know is you're going to have to wait a while. They're still working on a script, but the writers say they are making significant progress. Word is they probably won't start filming until next year so it's going to be a while before you see Star Trek 2 (or is that Star Trek XII?) in theatres. At this point, the official release date is June 29, 2012, but I'm sure that could change.

William Shatner may still be sore that he wasn't in the last film, but he's moved on to another project since and that's a TV series based on the Twitter feed Shit My Dad Says. If you've ever read any of those Tweets, you know that Shatner's the perfect choice for the role. As for a Twitter feed called Shit Shat says, forget about it, he says he's got problems with electronics.

If you can't wait until the new Trek movie and are tired of watching old episodes on DVD, try seeing some Star Trek in person. They've got a Trek gimmick at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex down in Florida, but this review argued that it's not so good.

To wrap things up, here's a link to 14 things you didn't know about Star Trek. Unless you're a true Star Trek fan, then I'm guessing you already know a lot of them already.

So is time travel even possible or is it just something that science fiction writers invented?

If you ask the scientists, it may indeed be theoretically possible. The problem is, there are different theories as to how it could be done.

Famous physicist Stephen Hawking has been speaking out on the subject recently, no longer afraid of being labelled a crank for his ideas on time travel. In this article, he looks at the idea of linking wormholes in space to travel to the past, but concludes that it is impossible to move backwards in time, but things by accelerating to a very fast speed we'd be able to travel to the future due to the effects of time dilation as you approach the speed of light. Unfortunately, it's a one-way trip.

While Hawking isn't sold on travelling through wormholes, others have not dismissed the idea entirely.

Another line of thinking is the quantum time machine. With such a device, you'd just change the variables in the mathematical equation defining time travel until one of them allowed it to be true. That sounds like a whole lot of theory. Don't ask anyone how that could actually be done.

This article goes explains the idea of quantum time travel in a little more detail, but it still sounds as improbable as journeying through worm holes or accelerating to the speed of light.

Let's just agree that the boffins believe that time travel is possible. It's just a long way from actually happening. For now the only way to travel into the future is to keep on doing what you're doing so that you will get there one minute at a time.

When I spotted a link to the science fiction movie Primer from IO9, I was going to urge you stop what you are doing and head over to Google Video to watch it where it had made it freely available for anyone to watch online. The only thing is the video isn't there so maybe it wasn't legit. I'm sure you can find it from other online sources if you do a bit of searching.

It really is worth seeking out. I'm not surprised to find it on this recent list of the 16 most intelligent science fiction movies. I was also pleased to see Gattaca on the top of the list, which I was just mentioning the other day because it appeared on a list of underappreciated sci-fi movies.

If you want to watch other science fiction movies online, you may not be aware that YouTube has a movies channel where you can watch full-length films. The usual categories are represented, including science fiction, although the pickings are slim and you won't find any of the titles on the aforementioned best-of lists.

For even more schlocky online movie watching, here's a long list of 100 science fiction films, arranged by decade. It would take a long time, and a strong constitution, to wade through all of them.

Our galaxy is teeming with Earth-like planets. As a science fiction fan, you probably already figured that was the case, but now there's some real science to prove that it's true.

In recent years, astronomers have been finding all sorts of exoplanets, but they are bizarre, gas giants orbiting close to their suns at tremendous speeds. The new Kepler Space Telescope can spot much smaller worlds and has already identified an amazing 140 candidates for planets that are Earth-like, at least in size.

Whether or not these worlds have atmospheres like ours or water is not known yet, but don't rule out the possibility that life may be there if those elements are not present. There are plenty of scientists who think you don't need water to harbour life.

For those of you who subscribe to the water=life theory, then you may be intrigued to learn that some experts believe that our neighbouring planet, Mars, once had 1/3 of its surface covered by oceans.

Perhaps movie director James Cameron will help us better understand the red planet. He's convinced NASA to let him film the place in 3D on one of their upcoming missions. Forget Avatar, this the Cameron movie I want to see!

Of course, the UFO conspiracists will tell you were wasting our time wondering whether or not life lives elsewhere in the universe. There's already a vast, government conspiracy covering up the UFO fact.

So how do you decide which books to read? Many of us rely on word-of-mouth from friends or from other fans posting reviews on websites like this one, but some of us are now turning to book recommendation engines. These are social websites which compile the likes of its members to crunch the stats to come up reading ideas for you.

If the thought of your tastes being boiled down to a mere algorithm is distasteful, be aware that there are professional book recommenders. No, it's not a recommendation you get from reading a professional book review. It's a flesh-and-blood person who quizzes you on your tastes and comes up with a reading list for you. We used to call those people librarians.

If that sounds too pricey, you could always turn to free web quizzes like this one which lets you decide which flavour of apocalyptic fiction is right for you.

It looks like a critical backlash against the science fiction movies Inception has begun. This article points out how the number of positive reviews for the film seems to be sliding from the early days. It theorizes that the earliest reviews were from those no-good, uncritical "bloggers" who don't know anything about movies when compared to those exalted, mainstream newspaper reviewers.

I'd argue that the latter group will tend to give the film lower marks because they have difficulty grasping original science fiction movies that aren't all about special effects and laser battles. It's a fairly common occurance to see mainstream critics give low marks to genre films that are beloved by fans who can be very demanding when it comes to what qualifies as a good science fiction film.

As this writer points out, a similar situation arouse when Eterntal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was released. Many loved it, but a goodly percentage didn't understand it and hated it as a result. Inception director Christopher Nolan has already distinguishes himself in the eyes of genre fans with his movie the Dark Knight, but also for his underappreciated The Prestige.

On the subject of underappreciated science fiction movies, here's a top 10 list which is topped by my favourite, Gattaca. When someone revises the list in a decade or so, perhaps Inception will be there.

At least it's helping salvage a mediocre summer movie season.

I've never been to a Comic-Con in my life, but judging by the way things are going, what was once considered geek nirvana seems to be turning into an exercise in Hollywood PR.

As this writer points out, the annual San Diego convention has strayed far from its comic-book roots and it won't be long before the "cool" kids outnumber the fanboys. Can the convention survive the shift?

It's not just Hollywood movies which are getting pumped up at Comic-Con, but genre TV shows as well and sorts of other SF & F products.

Call it the revenge of the nerds, but the studio suits are flogging their wares at the convention in order for the fans to generate plenty of free word-of-mouth publicity for them. Of course, the flip-side of generating postive buzz is that it's just as possible to have the fans turn on you and start bad-mouthing your product before it goes public.

As this blogger points out, some fans are enjoying their new-found powers and have become self-important critics that use the internet to bash what they dislike and fawn over what they do like.

If you ask me, the best thing about the convention are the costumes, especially those sported by the female fans.

The news that Amazon is selling more electronic books for its Kindle than hardcover books is interesting. Does it signal some sort of tipping point that e-books have passed into the mainstream?

I've found myself reading e-books more and more and am perfectly comfortable with them, although they have their limitations, but I think that is mostly a problem when people try to adapt text from an existing printed form into an electronic one and the result is less than optimal.

The problem remains whether or not selling e-books, or e-any kind of media, is going to be sustainable in the long term. As this essay bluntly states, the internet is a copying machine and once copies are super-abundant, they become worthless. Will that happen to books and other media? People will pay for scarcity, but soon supply is going to outstrip demand.

The other thing I have found with electronic books is that they are even easier to amass than the physical ones which already strain my shelves to the point that they are becoming warped. When you can fit hundreds of electronic books in your pocket, you find that you want to read them all and end up skimming more than you would with "real" books.

Some think that we are becoming accustomed to skimming by reading on the internet. We're more interested in learning new facts than we are in actually absorbing those facts and taking the time to digest them. That has led some to propose a "slow reading" movement. I am all for it, but I wish I could read faster and with sufficient comprehension that I can actually plow through those books, physical and electronic, which are threating to bury me.

I am excited by the news that Daniel Radcliffe, the eponymous star of the Harry Potter movies, is set to play in a new horror movie adapted from the novel The Woman in Black. It's not the news that Radcliffe is making a movie that's got me excited, but that it will be the first film from a revived Hammer Films.

While known mostly as a horror studio of schlocky vampire movies during the 50s, 60s and 70s, they also made some science fiction titles, most notably The Quatermass Xperiment.

I am curious to see what sort of success the studio has, although it seems unlikely that they can recreate the spirit of the original studio. It's sort of like those revivals of the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. Each time they tried, the magazine seemed a little less amazing than the original.

A Chicago newspaper editor once instructed his Civil War correspondants "when there is no news, send rumours."  He obviously foresaw the era of internet journalism.

The latest rumour that isn't news is a tidbit from the Sun in the U.K. that the latest Doctor Who, Matt Smith, will stick around for just one more season before taking off for Hollywood to try his hand at being a movie star. It's worked so well for all of the other actors who've played Doctor Who. (That last line is me being sarcastic.)

Although there is a Hollywood rumour about a former Doctor Who actor who may have a major role in an upcoming film. There's talk that Sylvester McCoy may play Bilbo Baggins in the planned Hobbit movie. At this point, I'd be happy to just have it made. There so much disarray within MGM that it might never happen.

I do like one viewer's comment on Smith's departure from Doctor Who. Bring Christopher Eccleston back. He's the guy who lasted only one season before he took off for brighter lights. Now that would be a new twist for the show.