Just a note on a new guilty pleasure of mine...the anime show "Cowboy Bebop" which shows up on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim segment, late Thursday and Sunday nights.

Taking place in the near future (2070 or so), it's pretty straight spaceship stuff mixed with film-noir detective styles.

But what makes the show really interesting is the environment. Aside from the rocket-powered spaceships, the only advanced transport technology is a warp gate of some kind that allows transport across interplanetary (NOT interstellar) distances in hours instead of months. Gravity is by spinning parts of spaceships.

Where it gets really good is that the population has largely moved into the rest of the Solar System, and terraformed it to a huge extent. Not only are people walking around in their shirtsleeves on the moons of Jupiter and areas of Mars, but the cities and towns and the environment are almost indistinguishable from areas of Earth where people have lived for centuries. One episode takes place inside a hollowed asteroid O'Neill type colony, where a huge, natural landscape covers the surface of the cavernous interior.

No funny aliens. No magic Star Trek tech.

All this and kids, dogs, and pretty girls! Good stuff!