Cousin Of Son Of Space-Bat, Part 2  Where are all the original
science fiction movies? Zoe's Tale author John Scalzi rails
against the sequels and tweakels coming in 2009. But then he
makes a point I haven't seen anyone make before.  Writes Scalzi:
Original, major science fiction releases for 2009? Well, there's
the super hero deconstruction tale Watchmen in March and James
Cameron's whatever-the-hell-he's-been-up-to-for-a-decade Avatar
in December, plus the animated spoof Monsters vs Aliens. But
while casting no aspersions on the potential quality of either
Watchmen or MvA (I'm looking forward to both, actually), those
movies are thematically "meta," which is to say they rely on us
having sucked down enough superhero and monster flicks in the
past to get what they're trying to do. Basically, we have to
know the genre to get the story, and that means Avatar is the
only big scifi movie next year that we're walking into totally
blind.  Scalzi is totally raising the bar here — asking for
movies that aren't just