This Week in Geekdom



A little bit of fun news before we kick off This Week in Geekdom: The Care and Feeding of Nerds family got a little bit bigger today with the addition of Serenity. The GIR and I have been considering pet ownership for the past few years and earlier today Serenity selected us as her new owners. We look forward to many cat-assisted rolls in future gaming sessions.

Our new Calico-class cat-ship
Science/Technology

Interstellar space travel just got a little bit closer to reality thanks to a 19-year-old Egyptian physics student. The student, Aisha Mustafa, has patented this quantum propulsion system

Microsoft has confirmed that they will be publicly discussing the next generation operating system, currently known only by its codename 'Threshold', during its 2014 BUILD conference in April. 

 Ok, it's 2014 and we don't yet have a hoverboard. But, we're reasonably close with this

Mmmm...delicious batteries
Cheap renewable energy. At present, the best you can feasibly get is a combination of two of those three things. This team of Harvard researchers aims to change that with their quionone-powered organic battery.

A lot of interesting, eyebrow-raising things came out of this year's CES. We had Michael Bay having a full-on meltdown, we had insanely gorgeous gaming rigs, and we had renewed claims that the death of the PC is at hand. Do you agree?

Comics

Sometimes playing around with narratives to create alternate timelines is a fun, interesting way to expand a franchise. For Dark Horse, there are definite limits to this sort of recombination when you're working with something as weighty as Star Wars. Read here for a description of the graphic novels that almost were, featuring a Sith Leia and Luke ruling the galaxy together.

Movies

This past week was chock-full of news (or as close as we can get to news during this early developmental stage) concerning the upcoming Star Wars films. Leland Chee, the so-called Keeper of the Holocron for all things LucasFilm, confirmed that a 'story group' had been formed to determine once and for all what pieces of the Star Wars universe will be canon, and which will be shunted out the proverbial airlock.

Speaking of Star Wars movies, it is official: there will be an all Boba Fett spinoff movie

Is the upcoming Superman vs. Batman movie going to wreak even more havoc with comic canon? Actually, it seems like the response on that is probably not.

TV (Special all Dr. Who Edition)

As Whovians prepare to move on to the 12th incarnation of the Doctor, Den of Geek drew up this list of questions that have gone unanswered during the reign of Matt Smith.

A double-dose of fun for Whovians this week. Here are all 50 years of space-time travel in one handy, interactive infographic

And last, but not least, here are the first production stills and notes from the set of Dr. Who and our first glimpse of Peter Capaldi in the title role.

Games

Were you one of those burned by the recent rash of technical bruhaha maligning the game CONSORTIUM? Well, Inspirational Games and Steam would like to apologize for that with this, one of the most sincere mea culpas to have graced the internet to date.

General Awesomeness

Earlier this month, seven-year-old Sophie wrote to the researchers at the CSIRO asking why they had not been able to produce any dragons with their efforts. Initially, the scientists sent their apologies at this grievous oversight. On Friday the CSIRO sent her this.

Oh infographics, how we love you. Click here to see such an illustration that captures all zombies across all canons. Want a copy of your own? Visit the artist's Kickstarter page.

Fans have waited over two decades to see this, but the first official Simpsons Lego playset will soon be available for sale.

As always, best wishes for an awesome week ahead!

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