Whenever normal people hear the phrase “science fiction,” they run for the hills and never look back.  I am not one of those people, so it was with great pleasure that I accepted an invitation to see an advanced screening of the pilot for ABC’s new series FlashForward at the Arclight in Hollywood, followed by a Q & A with the producers and much of the cast.

Like the brilliant Lost and Battlestar Galactica before it, FlashForward is not your typical sci-fi and it should appeal to geeks and normal’s alike.  The makers of this show understand that it’s human drama and not cool visuals that make for compelling science fiction.  Set your phasers on fun and read more after the jump!

Flash Forward, the new sci-fi show for ABC, premiered the opening fifteen minutes at Comic Con, and the cast and crew were there to talk about it.

Produced and co-written by David S. Goyer (of Batman Begins fame) and Marc Guggenheim (writer for Marvel Comics and the upcoming Green Lantern movie) the show is a science fiction story about what happens when everyone in the world suddenly blacks out and has visions of events six months in their future. It stars Joseph Fiennes, John Cho, and Dominic Monaghan. Read a description of the footage, plus the thoughts of the creators, after the jump.

Until a week ago, I had never seen more than thirty seconds of Lost. There’s a good reason for this: I don’t watch TV. That’s not because I’m a snob, it’s because I always have a pile of movies to watch. And as that is the case, making time to watch television has always been a luxury I’ve denied myself. So, with that in mind there’s going to be two types of people reading this. People like me who never watched the show, and those who are religious about it, or got turned off at some point. I will gear the first part of the review for those who haven’t seen it and the second part for those who have. It’s all after the jump:

Look, “Lost”–we have a deal.  You get to mindfuck me as much as you want for the four months of the year when you’re on the air.  The other eight I get to try and wrap my head around the latest season before coming to conclusion I always come to which is that I won’t understand the puzzle until I have all the pieces so I should just give my poor brain a break. [Spoilers from this point on]

You broke the deal, “Lost”.  Or rather, ABC did by airing a new promo featuring Dominic Monaghan who played Charlie Pace.  There’s just one problem:  Charlie died at the end of season three so what the fuck is going on when Patrick Dempsey says to him during a little foosball game, “You’re so dead!” and Monaghan turns to foosball partner Courtney Cox (who will be on ABC’s upcoming “Cougar Town”) and says “I was.”

Did the Losties really manage to alter time in the season finale?  I’ve been maintaining that they actually caused the incident rather than avoiding it.  To change time and make the plane land safely in New York, there’s no way that Sun is back at the island three years later with Ajira people, the Others, and all those weird goings on…unless there are now two parallel timelines, in which case…

And I’ve gone cross eyed.  We had a deal, “Lost”!  Check out the promo after the jump.  The final season of “Lost” premieres in 2010.