[This is a one-off request from the most recent readership poll.]

This is a great idea! Many times my critiques pass the buck from the interface designers to the script writers, so in all fairness I should also interview them. I would very much want to have completed a review for them to respond to first, though it’s admittedly not a requirement. I do have a personal connection to the author of Arrival. Maybe I’ll get to that one.

One clarification, though, reader: Do you mean authors for the shows I’ve reviewed, any show, or authors of written sci-fi?

Also: Does anyone have connection to authors of sci-fi? Especially of any shows that I’ve reviewed already? (If you’re an RSS reader, there’s a list of shows on the right-hand side of the site.) If so, send me a private message at chris[at]scifiinterfaces.com and pass me the author name and how you know them. Then we can discuss your asking them if they’d be OK with an instruction to me for an interview.

[This is a one-off request from the most recent readership poll.]

Reader wish: Most of the content is fixated on one type of FUI. It would be nice to see more diverse UI work.

This was really weird for me to read since Scout and I are currently reviewing magic items as if they were tech. In the past the blog has covered bizarre gestural, suicide kits, Krell technology, robot design, ectoplasmic containment units, NUI, AI, service design, and even panopticon teleporting matchmaking interfaces.

I have gone back to the beginning of sci-fi and thereafter spread new reviews out amongst the decades. I review every interface in any given movie or TV show, using a very broad definition of interfaces. The only type of sci-fi interface I won’t cover is weapons, torture devices, or work done by toxic people.

So if you can comment and help me understand more of what you mean I’d appreciate it. But if that doesn’t satisfy, HUDs and GUIs includes the occasional games and some lightweight analysis, too, so be sure to check them out. And of course anyone is welcome to offer to contribute to ensure there is more diversity of the sort you are seeking.

• You could mean games, and here’s why not.
• You could mean literature or illustration, and the intro to the book covers why that’s a non-starter.
• You could mean more obscure sci-fi or subgenres, and that’s just a matter of my limited bandwidth.

I guess what I’m saying is I think the blog already covers a huge range of FUI, within the constraints of movie and TV sci-fi. If you’ve actually identified a blind spot I’ve had, please email me or comment on the site so I can have my eyes opened.

[This is a one-off request from the most recent readership poll.]

Reader wish: I wish there would be more interviews whenever you can get creators to talk about their interfaces, because I’d like to have more context about the story behind them.

Sounds good. I like that content, too.

I’ve been explicit about the virtues of a New Criticism approach to critique, which explicitly calls against including a creator’s intention in a critique. I still believe that to be true, despite modern trends toward ad hominem analysis.

But after a review gets completed, I don’t see any harm. Well, except that lots of sites are now featuring creator interviews, and it’s a time-intensive undertaking for—comparitively—not much pay off.

I’ll do my best. Let me know if you have any particular interfaces that you’re thinking of, or even any particular creators you already know about in the comments.

[This is a one-off request from the most recent readership poll.]

All true. I follow the analyses where they lead, and I won’t reject a line of inquiry because it’s abstract, pedantic, or obscure. My twitter description used to note that “I delight in finding truffles in oubliettes”, and that bit of poetry refers to exactly this.

If I was to flatter myself, I would love for this blog to be considered in a league with PBS Idea Channel. Insightful and unapologetically nerdy. Not there yet of course.

So I hadn’t considered this a bug but a feature.

I’d love to hear from other readers. Do you feel this same way? If a majority of readers feel that the abstraction, depth, and obscure places the blog goes to is off-putting, it might be a good moment to consider the future of the blog.

[This is a one-off request from the most recent readership poll.]

This reader free-form comment has two parts.

1. All the analysis lately has just been of lo-res/boring/barely seen interfaces from old programs…

I presume you mean the Star Wars Holiday Special and perhaps Johnny Mnemonic, but Doctor Strange is from 2016, and that analysis began 30 MAY, five weeks before this reader poll. So…maybe check out those?

Also, note that I’m in this for the insight, and hi-res/explosion-filled/blockbusters have no monopoly on insightful ideas. In fact, if anything, I’d wager they’re most often the shallow ones. I hope to encourage readers to explore more sci-fi to learn the cool stuff that is out there, well beyond the most-hyped stuff at Comicon. So, reader, please join me in judging books by their contents, and looking across the whole library.

2. …and now every show is stretched thin over many separate articles.

If it helps to know, my writing style is quite the opposite. I tend to write things out as single posts to get the thinking right, and then yes, make a call as to how to divide it up. For instance, the readership poll posts started out as single post that scrolled for miles and I just couldn’t see asking anyone to set aside a vacation to read it as one post. Reader logs show me that people don’t read the longer posts, so I keep it cut down to digestible chunks. My mental model is something that someone can read in a short  break at work. My apologies if that feels thin rather than digestible.

I should do my due diligence though and just ask: Are people more interested in long-form posts, like I began the blog with (see Metropolis and The Cabin in the Woods) rather than the short-form posts adopted after then?