In the future, past, and present four or five actors wear horrible makeup as they go about a number of random and pointless tasks which have occasional overtones of significance. Mixed in with the mundane lives are several brutal and shockingly graphic moments tossed in for shock value. The four or five stories are a bit of a challenge to follow and there is a hint or two that there should be some sort of connection that is never adequately explained. There isn’t even the basic sort of logic that the same actors are playing the same time hopping souls. …
Category: sci fi
Lord Foul’s Bane Book One of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever
There are now almost ten books set in the universe of The Land. But it all started in 1977 with Lord Foul’s Bane. I just finished re-reading Lord Foul’s Bane for the first time in many years-it’s one of a handful of books that I’ve read more than once-and it seems both just as good as I remember it, and kind of silly. We open up with a grumpy man stiffly waking two miles into town to pay his phone bill. Along the walk he thinks about how much his life sucks since he came down with leprosy. His wife…
NBC’s Revolution 1st Episode
Revolution is the story of a world where electricity no longer works. In the opening scene we see a man who knows what is going to happen, his wife who knows what is going to happen, and his brother who gets a call warning him about what is going to happen. Then it happens-click-everything stops working. Cars rolls to a stop, planes fall from the sky, computers and TVs switch off-and will never switch back on again. Welcome to the revolution. We flash forward 15 years or so and find ourselves in a cul-de-sac turned into a farm where the man…
Total Recall 2012
Philip K Dick wrote a lot of very good stuff. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale was a fun little story about a man with buried memories who runs into trouble when he accidentally finds those buried memories. Arnold’s Total Recall has next to nothing to do with Dick’s story and the new Total Recall has very little to do with the old Total Recall. That whole bit of business with Mars is tossed out for starters, which makes it a bit odd when the Mars mutant with three boobs shows up. This is also a kinder and gentler…
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Clearly Philip Jose Farmer wasn’t thinking about a series of books when he named this one To Your Scattered Bodies Go. It’s a title I’ve heard from time to time and it’s made a few best Sci Fi Books lists here and there. It’s one I recently got around to reading. To Your Scattered Bodies Go is the first of the Riverworld novels. These are stories about a world that has been terraformed into an unending river and populated with everyone who ever lived on Earth. It’s a concept that has some appeal, as a writer can plop down any…
Prometheus-In Space, No One Can Hear You Snore
Alien was an amazing movie set in a gritty world where space travel was mundane and the people working for the The Company were more interested in their bonuses than the monster that was loose in the bowels of the ship. H.R.Giger’s creature and spaceship were perfect, his wonderful mix of machines and organics was made for a sci fi movie project. Alien was meant to be a one off horror movie that didn’t need to answer any of the countless questions it asked, such as: Why did the ship stop? How did the robot know about the alien? Why…
The Hunger Games
In a world much like our own, something bad happened about 74 years ago and now the most popular reality show in the world has 24 people between the ages of 12 and 18 killing each other. It seems that this contest, called The Hunger Games, is supposed to keep the 12 Districts in line. We only get a real look at District 12, where our hero Kitniss lives. It’s pretty much an 18th century coal mining town, complete with poor white people who dress like the Amish. The Hunger Games was a good movie with a quick pace and…
John Carter
I can’t remember the last time I watched a Disney movie-oh yeah, it was Tron 2. Shudder. John Carter of Mars is the story of a US Civil War vet who ends up transported to Mars, where he has amazing adventures and wins the heart of a Princess. The CGI is good enough, it looks exactly the the CGI used to animate the last three Star Wars films and there is a strong Star Wars feel to John Carter. Hordes of computer generated aliens, a chase scene that stole a couple of moves from the Speeder scene in Return of…
Distrust That Particular Flavor
William Gibson has written some great novels and one of my all time favorite short stories-Burning Chrome. Most of his stuff has not held up well over time, he talks a little too much about Virtual Reality-even after it’s pretty much turned out to be a bit of a bust. Or maybe it just hasn’t been long enough, and once we are all living in The Matrix we will see what a true visionary Wiliam Gibson really was. His last couple of novels are sort of sci fi, in that they have a lot of science and a lot of…
Alcatraz
Alcatraz is the story of time traveling murders and the people who want to catch them before they kill again. It’s a good show on many levels, the actors are great, the production values are high, and who doesn’t long for a glimpse of the good old days of prison life in the early 1960s? The problem with all new Sci Fi shows is that the Sci Fi fan base has a very long memory and it’s all but impossible to come up with something completely new. Alcatraz has the look and feel of Fringe, The X-Files, Prison Break, LOST, The…