For decades, visions of life on Mars have been dominated by sleek domes, science-fiction skylines, and heroic astronauts gazing across crimson horizons. The reality, however, is far less glamorous and infinitely more fascinating. Long before humanity builds cities on Mars, it must first solve a much simpler problem: How do you keep four people alive inside an enormous, freezing, radiation-soaked desert millions of miles from Earth?

Every media executive in Silicon Valley will tell you print is finished. Every venture capitalist will insist that magazines belong to the same archaeological stratum as VHS tapes and dial-up modems. And yet on 13 November 2026, a 100-page annual magazine called Starlog will land on the shelves of Barnes & Noble, Target, and Walmart across North America — its first issue in seventeen years.

This week, Ron Howard confirmed he will direct the pilot of a television adaptation of Daniel H. Wilson's Robopocalypse, with Akiva Goldsman attached as showrunner and Steven Spielberg executive-producing through Amblin Entertainment. The announcement, reported by The Hollywood Reporter, represents a sharp turn for a project that spent fifteen years trapped in development as a feature film

Across five seasons and 50 episodes, Apple TV's For All Mankind has accumulated a 91% Rotten Tomatoes approval rating, spawned a spin-off series, and built a fictional timeline stretching from 1969 to the present day. It has done so without a single phaser, transporter, or warp drive — and in the process, it has quietly become what Star Trek used to be.

Last year, November belonged to video games. This year, it belongs to space sci-fi across every medium simultaneously — and the sheer density of releases arriving over the next thirty days represents something the genre has not seen since the autumn of 2014, when Interstellar, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, and Dragon Age: Inquisition competed for the same cultural oxygen. Here is everything arriving, ranked by significance, with the dates, platforms, and context you need to plan your month.

Beneath a sky of vaporised rock, 280 light-years from Earth, a planet completes its orbit in just ten and a half hours. Surface temperatures breach 1,800°C. Starlight hammers the dayside with enough ferocity to strip any known atmosphere into oblivion.

Three Olivier Awards, a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II, and two of the most recognisable characters in the history of space sci-fi — all belonging to a man who almost turned down the role that changed everything because he thought a "bald Brit" had no business commanding a starship.

This week, four actors whose combined screen time aboard Starfleet vessels spans more than three decades announced they have completed an entirely different kind of space sci-fi mission — and not a single phaser was involved.