The Adventures of Nebuleena in Retro Sci-Fi Movies

  From the Bronze Age to the Page and Stage Handmaids ran to attend their master, all cast in gold but a match for living, breathing girls. Intelligence fills their hearts, voice and strength their frames, from the deathless gods they've learned their works of hand. The Iliad Homer Translated by Robert Fagles Jason and the Argonauts (1963) In tales of the heroes of bronze age Greece, we might find the word "automaton". Its meaning is "self-willed", and will is what defines these entities. Perhaps Homer's description of the handmaids of the smith god Hephaestus, cast from gold but otherwise self-aware, are literature's first automatons, dating from around the 8th century BC. These are among several such artificial lifeforms produced in Hephaestus' forge. Journeying home from the far side of the world, Jason and his ship of Argonauts arrived at the island of Crete. Here, a man of bronze, Talos, threw rocks at their vessel, the Argo . Some say T...

The prairie jackalopes of Epona, a frontier planet in the star system Kitalpha, are cute and very tame, but make the most aggressive-sounding, bellowing growls and threatening howls. Pity the crew of the space station Terra Epsilon don't know that, as they flee from the creature scuttling around the station's air ducts, certain they're being hunted by a terrifying star beast. Nebuleena, not welcome in the Terran system since almost starting a war with the Amazons of Bellatrix, takes the opportunity to steal back her guitar, then retrieves her jackalope companion to return it home. Back aboard the Silver Swift , she sits at the console and pets the jackalope, which lets out an ear-splitting howl of contentment. Nebuleena puts on some earphones and activates the stardrive. In folded space, time and space mingle, and a journey of light years can be achieved in hours. There are signals here, too, leaked into space centuries ago and frozen in time; echoes of an Earth long lost ...