I expected Push to be a lot like Jumper, and there are a lot of similarities between the two films. Both feature good looking young people with amazing powers being chased by a bald black man. Both have exotic locations. Both make very little sense, but are still fun to watch. In Jumper the whole world was the film’s setting, but in Push we spend the entire film in one of Hong Kong’s many fine ghettos. Though there is the occasional hint that they might be going somewhere else. There was one scene that was reminiscent of the PreCogs in…
Category: science fiction
Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan
In the future, after another world war or two and after the United States have split into several parts-Genetic Variates are as common as different dog breeds. There are women who are genetically engineered to be great lovers, men who are engineered to do a lot of thinking, and men who are engineered to do a lot of killing. Our hero, such as he is, is a Variant 13-a Superman who is a recreated Human from twenty thousand years ago. Th1rte3n is a long and surprisingly deep book. The idea that bad things happen when you genetically engineer people is…
Babylon AD-Standard Issue Dystopia
The tag line for Babylon AD’s sci fi cliche fest might have been Life Sucks, and Then You Die. Set sometime in a future where we all know exact location by longitude and latitude-we find our usual Vin Diesel anti-hero living out his grim and nasty life as a mercenary. He is trapped in Russia, or some part of it, which has that Post Holocaust dog eat dog, well everybody eat dog, look and feel to it. Everyone wears trench coats and carries machine guns and those who have the money ride around in tanks. He gets a new assignment…
The X Files-No Aliens This Time
Spoilers within With what has to be one of dullest one sheets in recent movie memory, I wasn’t really expecting too much. The X Files-I Want To Believe moves along at a snail’s pace. The story is about a missing FBI Agent and the one Agent at the FBI who thinks former Agent Mulder can help to crack the case. There is an old man who has visions, played by Billy Connolly-who happens to be an ex-priest who buggered 37 altar boys-they seem to think this important as they mention it a lot. These visions are why the FBI seeks…
Planet of The Apes starring Charlton Heston
Get your paws off me you damned dirty ape. The Planet of The Apes starts off with a four person crew on a sleeper ship heading into deep space. The Captain is the last one awake and has a few regrets about leaving his world behind. Due to Relativity, everyone he has known is already dead before he enters the sleep chamber. When the ship crashes into a lake, they find the one woman on the expedition has died in cold sleep and only three men are left. They trek across deserts, over mountains, and finally find a wooded area…
The Draco Tavern by Larry Niven
I listened to The Draco Tavern on a recent trip to Tyler. It’s a series of short stories which are loosely related to each other, but the only real constant is the Bartender Rick Schumann. Rick Schumann is characterized brilliantly by narrator Tom Weiner. He has the perfect touch as a 1940s Film Noir character running a space age watering hole. My father in law was a huge fan of sci fi and grew up reading the pulps and listening to the radio. Now it needs to be said here that radio was the perfect format for science fiction-and by…
Arthur C Clarke Dies at 90
With the death of Arthur C Clarke, the list of great science fiction writers from the Golden Age has dropped to one-Ray Bradbury. Issac Asimov and Robert A Heinlein have been gone for some time and they seemed like relics from another time even then. I have not been a huge reader of modern science fiction, most of it feels as if it has lost it’s way. Harlan Ellison is among the last generation that grew up without television poisoning their creativity. And Harlan is no spring chicken himself. I loved 2001:A Space Odyssey, though to be honest, I never…
Alien Voices-The Invisible Man
Alien Voices is a group of former Star Trek actors still trying to pump some money out of the fast drying Star Trek well. For the most part, I have no problem with that. If I had been smart enough to link myself to Star Trek somehow, I would still trying to make money from it as well. Several years ago Malcolm McDowell starred as a bad buy in Star Trek Generations, easily the worst of the Star Trek movies. After filming he was interviewed and said it was fun, but he sure as hell wouldn’t be doing any conventions…
NBC’s Journeyman Time Travel in Frisco
I like Sci Fi, and to a lessor degree I like SF or Science Fiction. What is Science Fiction? Is NBC’s Journeyman science fiction? Science Fiction is a story where Science plays a major role in the story and there would be no story if you removed that scientific element. The Matrix, for example, would not work if you removed the computer complex known as The Matrix. Sci Fi however, is a more subtle beast. Sci Fi is dragons flying around New York City for no logical reason, sci fi is a fifty foot marshmallow man stepping on a church,…
Soylent Green is People, but you knew that.
Soylent Green is part of the Holy Trinity of Weird Movies made by Charlton Heston in the 1970’s. The other two are Planet of The Apes and The Omega Man. All three are slightly over serious movies set in a very unfriendly future. Unfriendly to normal humans as we know them today anyway. Soylent Green is based on Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! about a very crowded future were there is no food except the Soylent Company products of Soylent Green, Solyent Red and Solyent Yellow. Each is supposed to be made from soybeans and lentils and plankton. But…