PixlBit

Project M... researching... oh cool!

It's just when you see really obvious current events weaved into the scifi story that annoys me. I'm not opposed to it really, it's just I've seen it used too much as of late. One in particular that I've noticed in movies over and over and over again is the water boarding thing and interrogation. It's like in every darn movie now. What gives with that? I thought all that stuff was condemned by the public. Do movie makers think we want to see it, or support it in some way?

I was just thinking of how many computers I've had since 2000. It's four, two towers, and two laptops. That's like one every three years or so. I'm just passing three years on my present laptop. It runs great but I'm thinking of replacing it with a tablet.

Don't worry, I'll find them. Heck, I might even write one myself.

I agree. It's just that I'm tired of seeing the news recycled in various forms of entertainment media. It seems to be a method to keep things feeling familiar. I look to speculative fiction for something more - something outside the box. I would ask a writer to try and avoid appealing to me in any way. Challenge me.

I reread Heinlein's Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Asimov's first Foundation book last year. The only other modern scifi I read aside from Halo: Silentium was Farside by Ben Bova about Moon colonies and their struggle for independence from Earth. That one was pretty cool with lots of recent stuff about nanotech in it. I mix it up, old and new. 

I, Frankenstein wasn't bad, but it seems to me perhaps more of a rental type flick than a movie theater one; although, I was pretty wowed by the special effects in the IMAX 3D theater. There's not a lot more to it however. It really seems to channel today's conflicts between economics, religion and science and personify them in the main characters. Acting wasn't as bad as I was fearing and the dialog wasn't as laughable either. but... nothing really stands out strongly in the film. It was just fun and that was it.

Well, one was this story Space War by Neir R. Jones about a guy who dies in space and then gets resurrected by aliens, put in a robot body, and then helps them stop other aliens. It was written in the sixties too and I struggle to find anything related to the times.

Another one was A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay published in 1920 where the main character travels to a distant planet consisting of regions representing different philosophies. It was wild.

Wasn't Lemmy from Motorhead in there somewhere?

I'm seeing Halo in a whole new light. The '85 Bears as Space Spartans led by captain Ditka in search of the Championship Ring World. Wow! Mind blown!

Borderlands 2 is pretty cool. I got annoyed at the very same thing I did in the first game, the wobbly aim. At first, I just thought the game was bad, but then I realized I just had to level up. I wish my gaming bud would show up so I can play it some more. It's even better than the first one.

I read Snow Crash just last year. I thought it was really cool. The opening where he's a pizza delivery driver was hilarious, and I use the term Flatland and Metaverse all the time now to refer to 2D and 3D virtual space. Oh yea, and I named all my characters in Etrian Odyssey IV after characters in the book like Hiro, Raven and YT.

An example of the weird I like in scifi was the show Lexx on TV. One of the catch phrases of the show, and one I use in my Twitter profile, is "so far so weird". 

I read Philip K. Dick's Crack in Space written in 1966 and I saw so many 60's issues in the story. For one it's full of the Civil Rights issues of the day. Also, I remember a fashion designer once saying that all scifi stories are really about the present not the future citing all the sixties style costume and set design in Star Trek The Original Series. It's hard to write outside of the issues of the day, but I enjoy it more when a story achieves that.

Just saw I, Frankenstein. It was based on a graphic novel I found out in the credits. It wasn't bad. I saw it on IMAX 3D and I began to wonder why I would see any big visual movie like this any other way. The effects were stunning. Short synopsis: The Monster and a pretty scientist are caught up in a battle between angelic Gargoyles and Demons in business suits.