Maniac tells the story of a group of people involved in a bizarre clinical trail.We focus mainly on two subjects and two of the doctors conducting the study. And a slightly insane Artificial Intelligence. Maniac is the kind of show that would have never been made just a few years ago. It’s chock full of special effects, all of them flawless in their execution, and has a story that is a story in the loosest sense of the word. From the very start we are never sure of that these people live in the real world. There are none of…
Category: sci fi
Solo A Star Wars Story
Solo, a movie no one wanted made, telling a story no one wanted to hear. It could have been worse. It could have started with Han Solo being born in a dingy back room or in a dark alleyway. Instead, we start with a heist gone wrong. Han and his never before mentioned One True Love are stealing fuel, or something like fuel. This led to encounters with a lot of CGI. In fact, there is so much CGI in this film that I’m not entirely sure that there were any real people involved in the production at all. Lots…
Lost In Space
Most people remember Lost In Space, if they remember it at all, as a very silly show filled with talking carrots, cyclops, and sexy floating green women. It didn’t start out that way, the first couple of episodes were pretty serious with a lot of Cold War tensions as Dr Smith is clearly an Agent for the Bad Guys. They fairly quickly dropped the Super Villain aspect of Dr Smith since this was a story that had no where to go. Either they killed Smith or they turned him into something less threatening. They chose the latter. He went from…
Ready Player One Movie
I read Ready Player One a few years after it came out. It was filled with pop culture references from the 1980s. the heroes were uber nerds that played video games, listened New Wave music, and could recite every episode of School House Rock. In short, this book was written for me. when word came down that Steven Spielberg was going to make the film adaptation, well, who better for the job? No one, that’s who. Ready Player One is a simple Quest story. Our hero spends most of his time in The Oasis, a virtual world along the lines…
Annihilation
Annihilation was an odd film. Much like Inception, the most lasting impression is the incredibly annoying music. A little of this alien thumping goes a long way, and it was pretty much constant. Annihilation tells the story of a woman whose husband has gone missing. He’s in the military and a year or so ago he went off an on a secret mission. She tries to find out what happened, but no one will tell her. Until one night when said husband appears at home. At first she is overjoyed to see him, but then she is a little nervous,…
Netflix’s Mute
Mute is a Science Fiction show that has no reason for being a Science Fiction show. It’s a simple revenge story. The kind that Charles Bronson made in the 1970s and Liam Neeson still makes today. But for some unknown reason, the story is set in some Sci Fi future with flying cars and giant billboards. A sci fi setting does not make a sci fi story, for that, you need some element of the story that has to do with, you know, science. Blade Runner is Science Fiction because it is about cyborgs, a futuristic bit of technology. If…
Altered Carbon
I read Altered Carbon when it first came out. I loved the idea and thought at the time this was one of those unfilmable stories. After all, its the tale of people who hop from body to body the way we change clothes. What actor would want to sign up for a role that would last one or two episodes? What audience could keep track of who was who? Then there was the overarching story with its multiple worlds, its super advanced tech, and its complex morality that no longer looks like morality at all. Netflix solves most of the…
Star Trek Discovery Season 1 Thoughts
The only thing that can happen to make this series make any sense at all is if they reveal the fact that it takes place in yet another parallel universe, and not the one known to fans of Star Trek. The Continuity Errors are through the roof, even if the constant addition of little nods in every episode to some past incarnation of Star Trek. The tech is too advanced, the unifroms are too different, and the Klingons-well, they just aren’t Klingons as we know them, Jim. Each Star Trek series has veered a little farther from the fun, heroic,…
Star Trek Discovery
Spoilers for the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery. If The Orville leans a little to the silly side, Discovery leans a little too much to the dark side. In the first two episodes, we met a Captain, crew, ship, and villain that will soon be dust in the wind. Just as well, they all had names that were impossible to pronounce anyway. On the whole, Star Trek Discovery is better than Enterprise, which is not too high a bar to jump. The show and its theme song hit a lot of familiar notes and bring up a lot…
A few thoughts about HBO’s Confederate
The first great alternate history book I remember reading was Guns of the South. It was by Harry Turtledove and told the tale of a group of South African racists that wanted to change history by giving the Confederate Army machine guns. It was an interesting read and spawned countless sequels set in the alternate universe. I read The Man in the High Castle at about the same time. I also grew up watching The Twilight Zone, which featured a lot of alternate history stories, time travel stories, and parables of one sort or another. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an interesting…