Hyperspace and evil computers

Take a leap into hyperspace It's looking more and more doable.

Top 10 Evil Computers

Thanks to Mike S. for the links.

The top 50 dystopian movies of all time

I largely agree with this list, and those I haven't seen, I want to.

Space: 1899

OMG this is a riot. Thanks to my friend Scott for the link.

Star Wizards: the vfx of Star Wars and Close Encounters

Star Wizards is AmericanHeritage.com's fascinating article on the special effects of two movies that affected me profoundly: Star Wars and Close Encounters. There were some facts that surprised me, three decades after the fact.

Sci-fi films are as dead as westerns, says Ridley Scott

And, after a moment of shock and some deep thought, I'm inclined to agree with Scott's baldly stated contention.

At the Venice Film Festival for a special screening of his seminal noir thriller Blade Runner, Sir Ridley said that science fiction films were going the way the Western once had. “There’s nothing original. We’ve seen it all before. Been there. Done it,” he said. Asked to pick out examples, he said: “All of them. Yes, all of them.”

The flashy effects of recent block-busters, such as The Matrix, Independence Day and The War of the Worlds, may sell tickets, but Sir Ridley believes that none can beat Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Made at the height of the “space race” between the United States and the USSR, 2001 predicted a world of malevolent computers, routine space travel and extraterrestrial life. Kubrick had such a fastidious eye for detail, he employed Nasa experts in designing the spacecraft.

Sir Ridley said that 2001 was “the best of the best”, in use of lighting, special effects and atmosphere, adding that every sci-fi film since had imitated or referred to it. “There is an overreliance on special effects as well as weak storylines,” he said of modern sci-fi films.

In fact, I haven't even read a science fiction novel in a good long while that stirred anything resembling interest in my breast. I'm sick to death of the old tropes, and the new post-Singularity/other-side-of-Clarke's-Law experiments are about as compelling as reading someone else's dream log. Which is to say, not at all.

We've reached the end of the line for this kind of writing, I think. No longer the red-headed stepchild genre, science-fiction is now just a niche in the overcrowded realm of general fiction. Perhaps it belongs in the "improvisational mythology" bin. The old SF myths lie in ruins at our feet. The new 'roll your own reality' stories lack solidity. The center cannot hold.

William Gibson gives a talk in Second Life

Talk about the serpent eating its own tail: here is the man who coined the term cyberspace, now entering it as an avatar. I'm a geek. This has a kind of technorgasmic completeness that leaves me almost speechless.



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Science Fiction writers sell out to the Dept. of Fatherland Security

Some of my favorite books are by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Greg Bear. But I have just read they are participating in a group called Sigma which is helping Homeland Security anticipate future threats and devise new weapons capabilities. Their motto is "Science Fiction in the National Interest." I think "Geeks kissing jackboots" is more accurate. Fuck me.

Why are they helping the Empire? In order "to save civilization," as Niven put it. Apparently you don't just need at least one technical degree to participate, you must also be susceptible to propaganda and easily lured to the dark side.

They just lost a fan.