Category Archives: Sci-Fi Saturday
I’m not quite halfway through Existence, by David Brin, but I’m enjoying it so much I have to start talking about it now. For one thing, it’s such a change from the Last Chronicles, which was a hard slog with a disappointing ending. (Still worth the journey, though.)
The novel is a standalone, not part of his Uplift Universe, but it apparently can be viewed as a kind of prequel to that reality. However: so far no alien contact, humanity is still on Earth, and computers are not conscious (but AI is very, very good). The year, as far as I can tell, seems to be in the 2040s or 2050s.
At heart, the novel’s theme is the Fermi Paradox; it examines many of the potential Great Filters that might end an intelligent species. But now an alien artifact has been found, a kind of message in a bottle that appears to contain a crowd of alien minds…
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18 Comments | tags: David Brin, Fermi Paradox, Great Filter, Isaac Asimov, Kiln People, Startide Rising, Sundiver | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday, Society
Earlier this week I posted about all the TV (5.0!) that I watched while dog-sitting Bentley. There I mentioned how days were allocated to reading in hopes of reducing what has grown to be a rather long To-Read list. (Not to mention the books in my To-Buy list; I really do need to spend more time reading.)
Central to the plan was, at long last, finishing The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Stephen R. Donaldson. Specifically, finishing The Last Chronicles, the third (presumably final) set of the series (“set” because while the first two were trilogies, the third is a tetralogy, with four books).
Unfortunately, for various reasons (or various naps), I only managed to get halfway through the second book.
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7 Comments | tags: Linden Avery, Stephen R. Donaldson, Thomas Covenant, white gold ring, wild magic | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
Art, famously, is a matter of taste, and as a general rule of thumb, you have it while others often don’t. Just goes to say. Because you know what you like, even if you don’t know anything about art. Simply put: taste is personal.
With commodity art like most films, many people weigh in, and opinions are often split, but sometimes, even with, or perhaps because of, so many, a consensus grows — thumbs up, thumbs down. Everyone, or nearly so, seems to agree one way or the other. In particular for today, there are the films everyone hated.
I’ve found some of those despised films are underrated gems — or at least are not as bad as popular vote makes them out to be.
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8 Comments | tags: Amy Heckerling, Dark City, Demolition Man, Johnny Dangerously, Johnny Mnemonic, Judge Dredd, science fiction, science fiction film, science fiction movies, The Fifth Element, Waterworld, Zardoz | posted in Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday
Judy, Judy, Judy!
I’ve been a fan of science fiction since the early 1960s. I was already an avid fan and ready audience for Lost in Space (1966–68; Judy was one of my earliest childhood crushes), It’s About Time (1966–67), and I was glued to the TV set enthralled when Kirk, Spock, and the rest, first boldly went in 1966.
By then I’d already consumed all I could of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, along with Verne, Wells, and Burroughs (I didn’t discover Tolkien or Howard until high school a few years later).
Movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), and Forbidden Planet (1956), all had me avid for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
It’s been a whole lot of years, and a whole lot of science fiction, is my point.
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22 Comments | tags: cyberpunk, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, Lost in Space, Neal Stephenson, Robert E. Howard, science fiction, science fiction books, science fiction movies, science fiction TV, SF, SF Books, SF Movies, Snow Crash, William Gibson | posted in Books, Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
The Doctor is in!
I’ve written before (twice) about how much I love Doctor Who (even more than Star Trek, and that’s saying something). I’ll tell you right now: nothing’s changed; it’s still my favorite TV science fiction show, hands down. I am enjoying the big changes this season: a new The Doctor and a new show runner, Chris Chibnall.
The big change to The Doctor, of course, is the first ever female incarnation, played by Jodie Whittaker. For some this is a bit like a female James Bond, but the idea that Time Lords (slash Ladies) are gender-fluid is canonical. (Statistically speaking, it’s past time The Doctor was female. As the season promos put it: It’s about time!)
In many ways, I find the fan reactions to these changes as interesting as the show itself!
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15 Comments | tags: Bradley Walsh, Chris Chibnall, Dalek, Doctor Who, Graham O'Brien, Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill, Ryan Sinclair, Steven Moffat, TARDIS, The Doctor, Tosin Cole, Weeping Angel, Yasmin Khan | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
Star Trek wasn’t hugely popular right off the bat, or even for a long time. The first series, after all, lasted only three years and had to fight for survival for most of that time. But it did catch on hugely with us fans; many of us fell in love right away.
From an early point even within the fan community, let alone to mundanes, some of us were careful to identify as Trekkers rather than Trekkies. As I used to put it, “Trekkers are grown ups who love science fiction. Trekkies own a pair of Spock ears.”
Then, because of a little movie, named Star Wars, science fiction went mainstream. And so did the divide between two rather different kinds of fans…
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28 Comments | tags: Bill Maher, Doctor Who, Gamergate, Ghostbusters, Leslie Jones, Marvel comics, SJW, social justice warrior, Stan Lee, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Doctor | posted in Rant, Sci-Fi Saturday, Society
I should probably start by hastening to add: I don’t dislike dinosaurs, either! It’s an ambiguity of English that when one says, “I don’t like X,” it can mean one has negative feelings about the ‘X’ in question, or it can mean just that one has no positive feelings for it — that one is neutral (or perhaps not interested enough to have an opinion).
It’s an easy jump from “don’t like” to “dislike,” so the phrase, “I don’t like X,” is usually taken that way. But I have wiring in my brain that makes me see it more literally — as failing to have a liking for ‘X’ — so I often have to clarify what I mean.
And what I mean is that I have zero interest in dinosaurs.
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3 Comments | tags: clowns, coffee, dinosaurs, Game of Thrones, ginger cookies, Jurassic Park, molasses cookies, pirates, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Tom and Jerry | posted in Life, Movies, Opinion, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
It’s been a long time since I’ve written a Sci-Fi Saturday post. (I didn’t post at all in 2017, so it’s been a long time since I’ve written a lot of things.) But last night I watched Mr. Nobody (2009), a slightly surreal science fiction film that I found hugely engaging and affecting, and it inspired me to write about it.
The truth is that Mr. Nobody isn’t actually surrealism — it does have a concrete narrative, but it’s a jumbled, imaginary, and fantastic one. That can sometimes be the case with really good science fiction. A common trick SF authors play is keeping you guessing until they reveal their mysteries.
Mr. Nobody isn’t particularly mysterious, but it does require that you pay close attention!
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2 Comments | tags: Amy Adams, Arrival (film), Denis Villeneuve, Jaco Van Dormael, Jered Leto, Many Worlds Interpretation, Mr. Nobody, Richard Kelly, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, science fiction, science fiction film, science fiction movies, Southland Tales, Story of Your Life, Ted Chiang | posted in Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday
The previous posts avoided spoilers and talked about HBO’s Westworld in general terms of its themes and characters — stuff that is apparent just from the trailers and basic setup. This post isn’t like that! Do not read this post unless you’ve seen all of season one!
Or unless you really like spoilers or just don’t care about the series. But if you do, you should trust me on this: You do not want this spoiled! It may even be all the better if you avoid any interweb discussion … the fans really did figure out some of the secrets before their big reveal. (On the other hand, the show’s creators have made it clear the truth was always in plain view. And so it was.)
Here are my questions and observations about the last episode and the season as a whole. I think we all have a few questions…
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10 Comments | tags: AI, Anthony Hopkins, artificial intelligence, Bernard Lowe, Dolores Abernathy, Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, HBO, Isaac Asimov, Jeffery Wright, Jonathan Nolan, killer robots, Lisa Joy, Maeve Millay, Robert Ford, robotics, robots, robots-as-menace, robots-as-pathos, science fiction, science fiction TV, SF, Thandie Newton, Westworld (TV series) | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
In the previous post I wrote about some of the general themes I saw in HBO’s Westworld. Such big picture topics are inherent in the basic description of the series — intelligent robots used as playthings — and don’t require spoiling plot points or character revelations. Everything I wrote about in the last post is part of the general context of the show.
In this post I want to look more closely at things that struck me in particular, but it requires exposing certain aspects of character or implementation that could count as spoilers if one is very strictly trying to avoid knowing anything about the show.
But if you have some idea about what’s going on, maybe just from trailers, this post shouldn’t spoil anything for you. I won’t give away any of the big secrets or reveals.
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16 Comments | tags: AI, Anthony Hopkins, artificial intelligence, Bernard Lowe, Dolores Abernathy, Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, HBO, Isaac Asimov, Jeffery Wright, Jonathan Nolan, killer robots, Lisa Joy, Maeve Millay, Robert Ford, robotics, robots, robots-as-menace, robots-as-pathos, science fiction, science fiction TV, SF, Thandie Newton, Turing Test, Westworld (TV series) | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
Logos con carne 