An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: San Diego Comic-Con -- like just about every large conference, convention, and gathering in 2020 -- has had to switch to an online-only virtual format this year due to the continuing pandemic. Media companies that usually have a large presence at events like SDCC worked hard to create streaming alternative content -- but it seems they forgot to tell their copyright bots.

ViacomCBS kicked things off today with an hour-long panel showing off its slew of current and upcoming Star Trek projects: Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and Strange New Worlds. The panel included the cast and producers of Discovery doing a read-through of the first act of the season 2 finale, "Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2." The "enhanced" read-through included sound effects, effects shots, and storyboard images meant to bolster the actors as they delivered lines from their living rooms and home offices. Even if the presentation didn't look like a real episode of Discovery to the home viewer, it apparently sounded close enough: after the Star Trek Universe virtual panel began viewers began to lose access to the stream. In place of the video, YouTube displayed a content ID warning reading: "Video unavailable: This video contains content from CBS CID, who has blocked it on copyright grounds." After being blacked out for about 20 minutes, the panel was restored, and the recording of the virtual panel has no gaps in playback.

A fifteen-year-old cartoon is an unlikely contender for most-watched show in America. And yet when "Avatar: The Last Airbender" arrived on Netflix, in May, it rose through the ranks to become the platform's No. 1 offering, and even now it remains a fixture in the Top Ten for the U.S. From a report: The series first ran from 2005 to 2008 on Nickelodeon, and swiftly made a name for itself as a politically resonant, emotionally sophisticated work -- one with a sprawling but meticulously plotted mythos that destined the show for cult-classic status. Last summer, after "Game of Thrones" flubbed its finale, fans and critics held up "Avatar" as a counterexample: a fantasy series that knew what it wanted to be from the beginning. Like all such stories, "Avatar" (created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, and no relation to the James Cameron blockbuster) demands some exposition. In a world where nations are defined by their connection to one of the four elements -- water, earth, fire, and air -- maintaining the peace falls to the Avatar, the only person who can achieve mastery of them all. Just as the Fire Nation launches an attack, he vanishes.

The series begins a century later, when a twelve-year-old boy named Aang is discovered and revived by a pair of Water Tribe teen-agers -- and the Fire Nation is well on its way to global conquest. The first two episodes are largely what you'd expect: world-building punctuated by moments of whimsy. In the third, Aang returns to the temple where he was born to find the aftermath of a genocide. He is, he discovers, both the Avatar and the last of the Air Nomads. Where earlier shows might have hinted at such an atrocity for adult viewers' benefit, "Avatar" is overt, taking seriously its young audience's capacity to confront the consequences of endless war. Moral ambiguity abounds, and people from all nations see the conflict as, variously, an opportunity or a tragedy; there are Earth Kingdom citizens who have become cynical or apathetic after generations of fighting, and those from the Fire Nation who are fully capable of doing good. Aang, like the monks who raised him, is a pacifist at heart, but the series makes it clear that his is not the only way of bringing balance to the world. On the eve of his confrontation with the Fire Lord, one of his past lives -- a warrior named Kyoshi, who has killed would-be conquerors before -- counsels that "only justice will bring peace."

cold fjord writes: Sir Ian Holm, a classically trained actor celebrated for his interpretations of Shakespeare, and with an astonishing range of work in important science fiction and fantasy films, has died at age 88. Holm's depiction of King Lear was celebrated, and he brought Puck to life in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." But most people on Slashdot will remember him for a few other roles, such as Bilbo Baggins, in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and two of the "Hobbit" movies. Holm also appeared in "Alien" as the android Ash, as Napoleon in "Time Bandits," and Cornelius in "The Fifth Element." Holm received a Tony Award in 1967, a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in 1998, a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1981, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Chariots of Fire. Holm received royal honors in 1989 and 1998.

As Marvel cuts staff and publishers stop selling new titles, artists, shop owners and writers worry for the future of an industry worth billions. From a report: There are no new comic books. Steve Geppi, head of Diamond Comic Distributors, which distributes nearly every comic sold in the anglophone world (or used to), announced this on 23 March, though senior industry figures already knew what was coming. The coronavirus pandemic had sunk retailers deep into the red. They couldn't pay their bills to Diamond or rent to their landlords, because they hadn't made any sales. "Product distributed by Diamond and slated for an on-sale date of 1 April or later will not be shipped to retailers until further notice," Geppi wrote. If shops can't pay Diamond, Diamond can't pay the industry's constellation of comics publishers, who then can't pay artists, writers, editors and printers, who now can't pay their rent or credit card bills -- or buy comics.

Sales of comics, graphic novels and collectibles distributed by Diamond were $529.7m in 2019 -- a huge number which suggests that a months-long gap between issues of Batman, Captain America and Spawn will stretch into tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue. (Though Diamond plans to start shipping comics to shops again on 17 May, many around the world will still be in lockdown then.) The unprecedented situation has encouraged many acts of kindness, by individuals and companies. In solidarity with the shops relying on physical sales, most publishers are not currently selling new comics digitally. And dozens of artists and writers are auctioning off books and art to benefit others; DC artist Jim Lee is sketching a superhero pinup every day for two months, selling them for thousands on eBay to benefit comics shops.

The Washington Post describes it as "the next internet." Wikipedia defines it as "a collective virtual shared space...including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the Internet." But it was Neal Stephenson who named it "the metaverse" in his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash.

Are we closer to seeing it happen? The Washington Post reports: In the past month, office culture has coalesced around video chat platforms like Zoom, while personal cultural milestones like weddings and graduations are being conducted in Nintendo's Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The Metaverse not only seems realistic — it would probably be pretty useful right about now. The Metaverse reality is still years, possibly decades, away. But Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has been publicly pushing for its creation, and he isn't alone in his desire to push for the Metaverse, where the online world echoes and fulfills real-world needs and activities. Constructing the virtual Internet space is Silicon Valley's macro goal, many of whom are obsessed with Neal Stephenson's 1992 book, "Snow Crash," which defined the term.

In recent years, Facebook, Google and Samsung have all made heavy investments in cloud computing and virtual reality companies in anticipation of a Metaverse... But it's Epic Games, with Fortnite, that has the most viable path forward in terms of creating the Metaverse, according to an essay by venture capitalist and former Amazon executive Matthew Ball... [The article also notes other "traits" of the metaverse in Minecraft and Roblox.] The most widely agreed core attributes of a Metaverse include always being live and persistent — with both planned and spontaneous events always occurring — while at the same time providing an experience that spans and operates across platforms and the real world. A Metaverse must also have no real cap on audience, and have its own fully functioning economy... Fortnite hasn't reached Metaverse status yet. But Fortnite as a social network and impossible-to-ignore cultural phenomenon, Ball says, provides Epic Games a key advantage for leading in the Metaverse race. Fortnite draws a massive, willing and excited audience online to engage with chaotically clashing intellectual properties... "This organic evolution can't be overemphasized," Ball writes in his essay. "If you 'declared' your intent to start a Metaverse, these parties would never embrace interoperability or entrust their IP. But Fortnite has become so popular and so unique that most counterparties have no choice but to participate... Fortnite is too valuable a platform...."

The current swarm to an online-only social and capitalist economy has only highlighted the current Internet's failings, and what the Metaverse needs to do, Ball said. Big sites like Facebook, Google and Amazon continue to dominate online activity, as do larger streaming services like YouTube and Netflix. But each location requires its own membership and has separate ecosystems. "Right now, the digital world basically operates as though every restaurant and bar you go to requires a different ID card, has a different currency, requires their own dress codes and has their own units [of service and measurement]," Ball said. "It is clear that this really advantages the biggest services. People are just sticking to the big games, really. However there's a clear argument that reducing network lock-in can really raise all boats here."

Sweeney said as much in his DICE Summit keynote speech February. If the game industry wants to reshape the Internet and move away from Silicon Valley's walled gardens, Sweeney stressed that publishers need to rethink economies in the same way email was standardized... "We need to give up our attempts to each create our own private walled gardens and private monopoly and agree to work together and recognize we're all far better off if we connect our systems and grow our social graphs together.
Neal Stephenson answered questions from Slashdot readers back in 2004.

The esteemed science fiction author, best known for movie "Arrival" that is based on his novel, on how we may never go "back to normal" -- and why that might be a good thing. From an interview on Electric Literature: EL: Do you see aspects of science fiction (your own work or others) in the coronavirus pandemic? In how it is being handled, or how it has spread?
TC: While there has been plenty of fiction written about pandemics, I think the biggest difference between those scenarios and our reality is how poorly our government has handled it. If your goal is to dramatize the threat posed by an unknown virus, there's no advantage in depicting the officials responding as incompetent, because that minimizes the threat; it leads the reader to conclude that the virus wouldn't be dangerous if competent people were on the job. A pandemic story like that would be similar to what's known as an "idiot plot," a plot that would be resolved very quickly if your protagonist weren't an idiot. What we're living through is only partly a disaster novel; it's also -- and perhaps mostly -- a grotesque political satire.

EL: This pandemic isn't science fiction, but it does feel like a dystopia. How can we understand the coronavirus as a cautionary tale? How can we combat our own personal inclinations toward the good/evil narrative, and the subsequent expectation that everything will return to normal?
TC: We need to be specific about what we mean when we talk about things returning to normal. We all want not to be quarantined, to be able to go to work and socialize and travel. But we don't want everything to go back to business as usual, because business as usual is what led us to this crisis. COVID-19 has demonstrated how much we need federally mandated paid sick leave and universal health care, so we don't want to return to a status quo that lacks those things. The current administration's response ought to serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of electing demagogues instead of real leaders, although there's no guarantee that voters will heed it. We're at a point where things could go in some very different ways, depending on what we learn from this experience.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you've been meaning to check out "Star Trek: Picard" or "The Good Fight," but already perhaps have one streaming subscription too many, you can check out CBS All Access for free until April 23rd in the US. Jean-Luc Picard himself (okay, Partick Stewart) revealed ViacomCBS would make it around the time of the show's finale.

schweini shares a report: Every year the world celebrates the anniversaries of masterworks and maestros. In 2020, a host of events and publications commemorated the lives of Ludwig van Beethoven, Raphael, Charles Dickens, Anne Bronte and William Wordsworth. Such milestones usually come in neat multiples of 50. The 42nd anniversary of anything is rarely observed. Yet on March 8th fans of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" ("HHGTTG") paid tribute to the comedy science-fiction series, which had its radio premiere on that day in 1978 and was subsequently adapted into novels, TV series, video games and a film.

To mark the occasion, Pan Macmillan reprinted the scripts and novels in colourful new editions ("HHGTTG" was the first book published under their "Pan Original" imprint to sell more than 1m copies). The British Library will host a day of "celebrations, conversation and performance." BBC Radio 4 has aired the original episodes; Radio 4 Extra will put on a "five-hour Hitchhiker's spectacular" including archival material and specially commissioned programmes. Such is the enduring interest in Douglas Adams's story that it is due to be adapted into a new television series by Hulu, a streaming service.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: SETI@home has announced that they will no longer be distributing new work to clients starting on March 31st as they have enough data and want to focus on completing their back-end analysis of the data. SETI@home is a distributed computing project where volunteers contribute their CPU resources to analyze radio data from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

Run by the Berkeley SETI Research Center since 1999, SETI@home has been a popular project where people from all over the world have been donating their CPU resources to process small chunks of data, or "jobs," for interesting radio transmissions or anomalies. This data is then sent back to the researchers for analysis. In an announcement posted yesterday, the project stated that they will no longer send data to SETI@home clients starting on March 31st, 2020 as they have reached a "point of diminishing returns" and have analyzed all the data that they need for now. Instead, they want to focus on analyzing the back-end results in order to publish a scientific paper. SETI@Home has a list of BOINC projects on their website for those interested in donating their CPU resources.

schwit1 quotes Syfy Wire: There is, admittedly, some ambiguity about precisely how Trek's transporters work. The events of some episodes subtly contradict events in others. The closest thing to an official word we have is the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, which states that when a person enters a transporter, they are scanned by molecular imaging scanners that convert a person into a subatomically deconstructed matter stream. That's all a fancy-pants way of saying it takes you apart, atom by atom, and converts your matter into energy. That energy can then be beamed to its destination, where it's reconstructed. According to Trek lore, we're meant to believe this is a continuous process. Despite being deconstructed and rebuilt on the other end, you never stop being "you...."

[Alternately] the fact that you are scanned, deconstructed, and rebuilt almost immediately thereafter only creates the illusion of continuity. In reality, you are killed and then something exactly like you is born, elsewhere. If the person constructed on the other end is identical to you, down to the atomic level, is there any measurable difference from it being actually you? Those are questions we can't begin to answer. What seems clear — whatever the technical manual says — is you die when you enter a transporter, however briefly.
The article also cites estimates that it would take three gigajoules of energy (about one bolt of lightning) to disassemble somebody's atoms, and 10 to the 28th power kilobytes to then hold all that information -- and 2.6 tredecillion bits of data to transmit it.

"The estimated time to transmit, using the standard 30 GHz microwave band used by communications satellites, would take 350,000 times longer than the age of the universe."

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger shared this report from the Hugo award-winning science fiction fanzine File 770: North Bellmore, New York fan Elyse Rosenstein, 69, died suddenly on February 20th. She had been undergoing rehabilitation after suffering a broken leg. At the time of her death, she was a retired secondary school science teacher. With Joyce Yasner, Joan Winston, Linda Deneroff and Devra Langsam, she organized the very first Star Trek convention, held in New York City in 1972. The convention was not only the very first media convention, it was also the biggest science fiction convention to date by a considerable margin...

At the time, Star Trek fans were often looked down on by many science fiction fans, who were more into books and magazines than TV shows. The pair hoped that a convention specifically geared towards Star Trek would do a lot to bring fans together. The rest, as they say, is fan history....

Elyse Rosenstein had a BS in physics and math, and an MS in physics, and taught science for more than two decades. She was a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Long Island Physics Teachers Association...

She was nicknamed "The Screaming Yellow Zonker" by Isaac Asimov.

A reader shares a report from Ars Technica: CBS has made the entirety of the first episode of its new series Star Trek: Picard freely and publicly available as a YouTube video. This is an opportunity for viewers curious about the show to see if Picard is worth subscribing to the network's streaming service, CBS All Access, to watch the rest of the series. The episode on YouTube is the same as the pilot episode that premiered on CBS All Access last week. The second episode of Picard began streaming on CBS All Access yesterday, and the network plans to release episodes at a weekly cadence.

CBS has not said whether it plans to make other episodes available for free on YouTube in the future, but it seems likely. The description for the video says the episode will only be available "for a limited time" and that it's presented by Geico. It does not, however, clarify how long "a limited time" is or when the video might become unavailable.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: On the night of December 30, Sergeant Vince Iovinella of the Morgan County Sheriff's Department in rural Colorado was on patrol when the calls started coming in about drones. "Residents began calling in reports of drones of unknown origin moving above houses and farms," Iovinella wrote in a statement obtained by Motherboard via a public records request. "The numbers would range from 4 to 10 drones in an area at a time. Some were reported to be low and at least 6 ft. long." Iovinella further reported the drones had white and red flashing lights as he and other deputies made "several attempts" to follow the drones. The drones were moving "very fast at times" but could also "sustain a hover over an area for long periods of time."

"There were many sighting's [sic] coming in and at the same time," Iovinella continued. "It is believed that there could have been up to 30 drones moving around the county if not more and appeared to be working in a search pattern across the county." This was yet another night on eastern Colorado's new drone patrol, following a slate of reports on mysterious fixed-wing drones in the area. They'd come out at night between approximately 7 to 10 p.m. The story, which was first reported by the Denver Post, got international press attention. "In all of these cases," Iovinella wrote in this statement, "it is unknown who owns the drone or what their purpose is." That's because the drones never existed. The Colorado Department of Public Safety (CDPS) "confirmed no incidents involving criminal activity, nor have investigations substantiated reports of suspicious or illegal drone activity."

"Of the 23 reports between January 6 and January 13 when the investigation was underway, 13 were determined to be 'planets, stars, or small hobbyist drones,'" reports Motherboard. "Six were commercial aircraft, and four remain unconfirmed. None of the 90 reports from November 23 onward were confirmed instances of illegal drone activity."

71-year-old science fiction author William Gibson coined the word "cyberspace" in his 1984 novel Neuromancer. 36 years later he's back with an even more dystopian future in his new novel Agency.

But in a surprisingly candid interview in the Daily Beast, Gibson says he prefers watching emerging new technologies first because "To use it is to be changed by it; you're not the same person."
"I'm not someone who works from assumptions about where technology might be going. My method of writing is exploratory about that."

That's certainly the case with Agency, Gibson's latest, a densely structured, complexly plotted novel that takes place in two separate time frames, which he refers to as "stubs," and has as one of its central characters an AI named Eunice, who is one part uploaded human consciousness and another part specialized military machine intelligence. In one stub it's 2017, a woman is in the White House, and Brexit never happened. But the threat of nuclear war nonetheless hovers over a conflict in the Middle East. In the other stub, it's 22nd century London after "the jackpot," a grim timeline of disasters that has reduced the Earth's population by 80 percent and left Britain to be ruled by "the klept," which Gibson describes as a "hereditary authoritarian government, [with its] roots in organized crime."

Given these scenarios, it's no surprise to discover that the 71-year-old Gibson's latest work was heavily influenced by the 2016 election and the ascendancy of Donald Trump to the presidency. "The book I had been imagining had been a kind of a romp," says the U.S.-born Gibson down the phone line from his long-time home in Vancouver, B.C. "But then the election happened, and I thought, 'Uh-oh, my whole sense of the present is 24 hours out of date, and that's enough to make the book I've been working on kind of meaningless.' It took me a long time [to re-think and re-write the book], and I thought the weirdness factor of reality, finding some balance -- what can I do with the existing level of weirdness, and that level kept going up. I wanted to write a book that current events wouldn't have left by the time it got out, and I think Agency works...."

"It's an interesting time for science fiction now," says Gibson, "because there are people writing contemporary fiction who are effectively writing science fiction, because the world they live in has become science fiction. Writing a contemporary novel today that doesn't involve concepts that wouldn't have been seen in science fiction 20 years ago is impossible. Unless it's an Amish novel."
The Washington Post calls Gibson's new novel "engaging, thought-provoking and delightful," while the senior editor at Medium's tech site One Zero says it's the first time Gibson "has taken direct aim at Silicon Valley, at the industry and culture that has reorganized the world -- with some of his ideas propelling it."

"The result is a blend of speculation and satire that any self-respecting denizen of the digital world should spend some time with."

And they're also publishing an exclusive excerpt from the novel.

Stephen Colbert: Isaac Asimov would have been 100 today. He published in every category of the Dewey Decimal system. After reading him your mind works better. Too many great quotes. Here's one: "Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right." Here's another: "It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety." In 1967, Asimov talked about what life with robots might be like in the future. "I wonder if we will make robots so much like men and men so much like robots that eventually we'll lose the distinction altogether." (A short BBC interview on it.)

Asimov's commentary on society: "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."

"There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity."

"There's no way I can single-handedly save the world or, perhaps, even make a perceptible difference -- but how ashamed I would be to let a day pass without making one more effort."

sandbagger writes: Visual artist and futurist Syd Mead, who helped shape the look of influential sci-fi films including "Blade Runner," "Tron," "Aliens" and "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," died Monday of complications from lymphoma in Pasadena, Calif. He was 86. Mead was set to receive the Art Directors Guild's William Cameron Menzies Award during the Guild's 24th Annual awards in February for his contributions on "Aliens," "Blade Runner" and "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."

This post contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Jason Koebler, writing for Motherboard: Emperor Palpatine is back with a fleet of planet-killing Star Destroyers, the masses are scared to fight the Final Order, and the last glimmer of hope for the rebellion is nearly stamped out by ... overbearing DRM? The Rise of Skywalker is an allegory for the dystopian nightmare we are quickly hurtling toward, one in which we don't own our droids (or any of our other stuff), their utility hampered by arbitrary decisions and software locks by monopolistic corporations who don't want us to repair our things. In Skywalker, C3PO, master of human-cyborg relations, speaks six million languages including Sith (spoken by the Dark Side), but a hard-coded software lock (called Digital Rights Management here on Earth) in his circuitry prevents him from translating Sith aloud to his human users. Presumably, this is to prevent the droid from being used by the Sith, but makes very little sense in the context of a galactic war that has relied so heavily on double agents, spies, and leaked plans and documents. The only explanation that makes any sense is a greedy 3PO manufacturer that sells the Sith language pack as a microtransaction and a galactic Congress that hasn't passed strong right to repair laws for the junk traders, droid mechanics, and droid users of the galaxy. C3PO's software lock is a major plot point in Skywalker as he's unable to translate a Sith passage that could lead our heroes to the Sith planet that the aforementioned Palpatine is hanging out on.

dryriver writes: 27 years ago, the BBC's "Tomorrow's World" show broadcasted this little gem of a program [currently available on YouTube]. After showing old Red-Cyan Anaglyph movies, Victorian Stereoscopes, lenticular-printed holograms and a monochrome laser hologram projected into a sheet of glass, the presenter shows off a stereoscopic 3D CRT computer display with active shutter glasses. The program then takes us to a laboratory at Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, where a supercomputer is feeding 3D wireframe graphics into the world's first glasses-free holographic 3D display prototype using a Tellurium Dioxide crystal. One of the researchers at the lab predicts that "years from now, advances in LCD technology may make this kind of display cheap enough to use in the home."

A presenter then shows a bulky plastic VR headset larger than an Oculus Rift and explains how VR will let you experience completely computer-generated worlds as if you are there. The presenter notes that 1992 VR headsets may be "too bulky" for the average user, and shows a mockup of much smaller VR glasses about the size of Magic Leap's AR glasses, noting that "these are already in development." What is astonishing about watching this 27-year-old TV broadcast is a) the realization that much of today's stereo stereo 3D tech was already around in some form or another in the early 1990s; b) VR headsets took an incredibly long time to reach the consumer and are still too bulky; and that c) almost three decades later, MIT's prototype holographic glasses-free 3D display technology never made its way into consumer hands or households.

Astronomers compared old views of the sky with what we see today and found that at least 100 stars appear to have vanished, or were perhaps covered up. While they've seen no signs of aliens just yet, they say parts of space where multiple stars seem to disappear could be the best places to look for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). CNET reports: On March 16, 1950, astronomers at the U.S. Naval Observatory pointed a telescope roughly in the direction of the constellation Lupus the wolf and took a picture. When scientists look at that same patch of sky today, something is missing, and it could be evidence of something else lurking out there. Back in 2016, researchers in Sweden reported that a star had been lost. One of the roiling distant suns visible in that USNO image from the previous century could no longer be seen, even with the more advanced and sensitive digital sky surveys in use today.

The team published a paper on the discovery, but called it "very uncertain" at the time, resolving to do more follow-up work and to continue scouring old USNO observations for other celestial objects that seem to have gone missing. Three years later, it's still unclear what happened to that star spotted in 1950, but the team behind the "Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations" (Vasco) project now says they've found a hundred more missing stars like it by comparing old and new observations. "Unless a star directly collapses into a black hole, there is no known physical process by which it could physically vanish," explains a new study published in the Astronomical Journal and led by Beatriz Villarroel of Stockholm University and Spain's Instituto de AstrofÃsica de Canarias. "The implications of finding such objects extend from traditional astrophysics fields to the more exotic searches for evidence of technologically advanced civilizations."

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger brings the news that D. C. Fontana, an influential story editor and writer on the original 1960s TV series Star Trek, has died this week. People reports: The writer is credited with developing the Spock character's backstory and "expanding Vulcan culture," SyFy reported of her massive contribution to the beloved sci-fi series. Fontana was the one who came up with Spock's childhood history revealed in "Yesteryear," an episode in Star Trek: The Animated Series, on which she was both the story editor and associate producer. As the outlet pointed out, Fontana was also responsible for the characters of Spock's parents, the Vulcan Sarek and human Amanda, who were introduced in the notable episode "Journey to Babel."

In fact, Fontana herself said that she hopes to be remembered for bringing Spock to life. "Primarily the development of Spock as a character and Vulcan as a history/background/culture from which he sprang," she said in a 2013 interview published on the Star Trek official site, when asked what she thought her contributions to the series were.

With Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, she also penned the episode "Encounter at Farpoint," which launched The Next Generation in 1987. The episode introduced Captain Picard, played by Patrick Stewart, and earned the writing pair a Hugo Award nomination.
Fontana was one of four Star Trek writers who re-wrote Harlan Ellison's classic episode The City on the Edge of Forever , and her profile at IMDB.com credits her with the story or teleplay for 11 episodes of the original series. In the 1970s Fontana worked on other sci-fi television shows, including Land of the Lost, The Six Million Dollar Man, and the Logan's Run series.

Fontana later also wrote an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, three episodes of Babylon 5, and even an episode of the fan-created science fiction webseries Star Trek: New Voyages.