Ready Player One was a near perfect book for me. Ready Player Two, not so much. Ready Player One was filled with all the nerdy nonsense that I loved when I was growing up. It was set in a world much like our own, but a few years down the road. The tech that made the books’ virtual reality work, was not that far off from the tech of today. Virtual Reality has been popular in science fiction for some time. The real world stuff, the MetaVerse type stuff, has never lived up to the worlds imagined in stories like…
Tag: science fiction
Star Trek Continues
Boldly Going, More or Less Fans of [easyazon_link identifier=”B002PQ7JQK” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Star Trek[/easyazon_link] have never really been happy with the newer editions of Star Trek. We all have these fantasies where NBC doesn’t cancel Star Trek and we get another season or two of the Original Series. Star Trek Continues is a group of those kinds of fans that are imagining a fourth season of Star Trek. There are four episodes so far and I have to admit that I like them a lot. They are very much in the meladrama format that Star Trek did so well. Tear jerking episodes that…
Terminator Genisys
More Terminator on Terminator Action Spoilers and Such I love [easyazon_link identifier=”B00153ZC8Q” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]The Terminator[/easyazon_link]. It’s a damn near perfect film that did a pretty good job of tying up its loose ends. But not so good a job that it didn’t end up with a few too many sequels. So it’s a bittersweet experience to watch the clumsily re-shot scenes from The Terminator and hear familiar dialogue spoken in odd voices. The redo of [easyazon_link identifier=”B0037NVM2C” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Judgement Day[/easyazon_link] as the opening credits roll was a pale imitation of Linda Hamilton’s raspy, hate filled voice from T2. But then, this isn’t that…
Humans-Androids Are Slaves
Another Science Fiction Show where machines with souls are bad. Humans is a British Channel 4 science fiction show picked up by AMC. The big American star in the cast is William Hurt. He plays a grumpy old man who has a strong attachment to his malfunctioning robot. In this alternate reality, health care is not only free, it’s mandatory. The Government tells William he must replace his old model with a new one. The new model appears to be based on Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. The main storyline has to do with a handful…
About Time
Time travel stories are often more fantasy than science fiction and so it is in About Time. Our hero turns 21 and his father takes him aside and says-‘Men in our family can travel through time.’ Oh, right-and that’s it for any explanation as to how or why this might be so. We then spend the rest of the film watching him bounce around in his own past, changing anything and everything that strikes his fancy, but mostly concentrating on finding the love of his life. His fathers sets a few ground rules, he can’t go forward in time and…
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…
Stargate Universe-Chevron Three Will Not Engage
When Stargate Universe first started, I had my doubts about yet another show dealing with heroic folks hopping from planet to planet every week. The whole premise of the series seemed a little silly. The Ancients wanted to find out the answer to the question of Life, The Universe, and Everything. Only, wait a minute, didn’t they all becomes gods themselves and find all the answers already? The Syfy channel, which was once upon a network that featured science fiction programing but has lately been fond of wrestling and ghost busting, canceled Stargate Universe and let the cast find out…
Being Human on Syfy
Being Human is the story of three friends sharing an apartment-one vampire, one werewolve, and one ghost. The show started out on the BBC, which makes sense since having a flatmate is the normal state of affairs in cities like London and Bristol. I had my doubts about the basic premise working in America, where everyone has their own place. But it looks like it will be fine. One of The Wife’s complaints is a simple one-NBC Universal is run by idiots. Or as my hero Rickey Gervais would say, NBC Universal is run by fucking idiots. They have a…
Stargate Universe Canceled by Syfy
The Syfy channel seems to be more interested in Wrestling and Paranormal BS than actual science fiction. Maybe that’s why they changed their name. The Syfy channel canceled Stargate Universe only weeks after canceling Caprica. The only shows remaining are Warehouse 13, Sanctuary, and Eureka. Tick tick tick That’s the sound of your life running out. I never liked Caprica, it was too much a show about The Matrix and too little a show about Battlestar Gallactica. But it was starting to get a little interesting, just when they axed it. I didn’t like Stargate Universe either, for similar reasons. …
Avatar Extended Edition
There was a lot I didn’t like about Avatar when I first saw it. That whole going native story take straight from A Man Called Horse and Dances With Wolves. That whole ecological story lifted from Fern Gully and Battle for Terra. Those damned robot suits stolen from Mech Warrior that look just as fake here as they did in Matrix Revolutions. And the worst name for a mineral EVER-unobtainium. But for all its countless faults, Avatar is still a damned good movie. Watching it, you forget the hokey special effects and goofy movements of the CGI giant cat people…