There ARE actually underground tunnels in Wright Patterson here in Ohio. That said, I'm sure they were mostly used for transportation of dangerous items, etc.

I know the zombie craze is already on the tail end but I want it to be over sooner rather than later. The vampire craze doesn't seem as widespread but I'm still patiently waiting for it to die as well. I wonder what will be next. Lovecraftian horror? It's been gaining some popularity it would just be nice if people realized Cthulhu really isn't as pivotal a figure as the mainstream believes he is. Yog-Sothoth for life!

XD How ironic. I just got my 2014 State of Michigan Zombie Hunting tags in the mail yesterday. This is true.

I don't know about UFO's but in the UK we seem to get a few thousand Aliens a month! :P

man, i remember last year's zombie apocalypse news about people eating other people's faces in broad daylight over in USA

History Channel? Bah.
I used to watch Sightings religiously. It deals with UFOs and supernatural stuff. Wonder what happened to it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2eVbQ7GbZU

I think the rise of nanotechnology in the popular imagination, coupled with increasing home fabrication tech like 3D printing, is going to trigger a resurgence of the Frankenstein motif. There will be more and more "homemade horror" in pop culture, from terrorists printing smallpox viruses to the mainstreaming of the Grey Goo nanoterror hypothesis (which will probably occur when two movies about the idea come out at the same time, as seems to happen in Hollywood). Expect to see lab-grown meat, designer organs, even the repopularisation of clones as monsters, in the near future of "hot" cultural commodities.

IIRC, in the Farscape Season 4, there was a interesting analysis on why SciFi was "oldfashioned" and why stars and space don't make human people dreaming anymore.

*** WARNING FARSCAPE SPOILER ***

That was when they came finally back to Earth, and paranoia was all other there, times had changed because of the early 2000's US trauma (you know what I mean). People have become down to earth, and it is somehow similar to what actually happens in the real world. NASA budget cuts for instance.

*** END OF FARSCAPE SPOILER ***

I think that "dreaming crisis" was one of the worst conceptual shift happened to humanity since WW2, because even during the cold war and every political crisis and every war happened since, there were still underground people thinking of a better world, curious of the universe, and writing novels, making films, developing games in the anticipation-science fiction genre. Beyond entertainment, many of those productions were criticizing the actual world and what it could become. But during the early 2000's all those dream were shut down to prioritize a down to earth point of view. Or the fantasy raised to a peak in the alternative dreams. I'm fine with fantasy, but it's more dreaming of alternative past than of alternative future.

There were some successful SF stories, like Battlestar Galactica, but even if that series was great, it was more "realistic" than other SF series, and it hadn't the little ounce of craziness that had many of other SF series (except the ending, maybe, but I really disliked the Battlestar Galactica's ending, because it was too sudden, and lacking of logical explanations - which is the real opposite of the entire series). Instead it was cold as steel. No sneaky insolence.

Those years were sad to me. Some TV series were discontinued like X-Files, Farscape or Firefly, even comics movies were more cold (look at what Nolan did to Batman), but maybe the last 90's Batman movies were too cheesy :D.

I think that video games just saved SF in the late 2000's with the Mass Effect series for example, as some late 70's movies did with Starwars (even if it's more Space Fantasy than Science Fiction) and Alien or the Road Warrior.
When I see the resurgence of old and new Space Sims, I am really happy. I hope that SF movies and TV series will be bankable again. Gravity was praised, but while it's not SF, it made people thinking of space, and perhaps dreaming of it.

But I'm a bit afraid of what could happen if another "crisis" will come in the future.

Someone mentioned Zombies higher. Monsters overall also went on longer then aliens - think vampires, werewolfs, etc...

The next thing is clearly superheroes. From Batman to Marvel, with less obvious but still ubermenschy mythical themes as part of the trend - be they byblical or classical.

Has the gestalt finally turned from cynical despair to unfounded optimism? In a way it makes sense that as we really start to go down the drain - hope springs eternal. :p

I fear the day the Zombie Apocalypse is over.

I feel it will only turn back to the Twilight type of movies. At least with the Zombie movies, besides that one movie, half the show or movie doesn't have to be some fairy tale love affair with shirtless vampire boys fighting over a girl.

Haven't we had enough of those type of movies. I think I'd take another Twilight over an X-Men movie.

I agree. Every time, a lot of new technology becomes available but not yet mainstream, what you said happens. Remember some of the 80s TV shows and movies had people using computers and the internet from their homes to do crazy stuff? Back then, hackers were seen as powerful sorcerers that could destroy the world or do anything else they felt like doing. I wouldn't be surprised if a movie soon came out about a group of horny male teenagers, creating a sexy woman with a 3D printer. But she ends up being a serial killer and the group tries to stop her or maybe she takes over the 3D printer and starts creating copies of her until she has an army of thousands to help her take over the city, town etc. LOL, remember that episode of Amazing Stories about this guy who uses chemicals to bring any picture to life?

Exactly. As Arthur C. Clarke might say today - technology that the masses don't yet understand are indistinguishable from magic.

And you should get a copyright on that script idea. I don't doubt something very similar will eventually be in production, and it's less stupid than about half of the scifi films that get greenlit today.

Maid To Order (Syfy Channel Original, 2015) - When teen technical geniuses Darvyn (Bradley Cooper) and Stookie (Shia LaBeouf) get hold of a government prototype material printer (voiced by Donald Sutherland), they turn a spool of plastic (Jessica Alba) into a killer femme fatale (Olivia Wilde). Only the eccentric discredited scientist Dr. Phixall (Jeff Goldblum) can help them stop her world-conquering plan!

While I hate Twilight, zombies are in no way any better. An antagonist without any character, it's like cartoons when the "bad guys" are some killing machines with aggression issues. OTOH, I would argue the problem with either of these is that are they immensely popular. There's bound to be good fiction for either themes (any themes really) as long as the author actually want to (and can!) write a story and not portray some superficial crap.

I think you have misunderstood Zombie fiction if you think the zombies are the antagonists.