Navigation

Tag Archives | Science Fiction

Lords of Barsoom

By on December 23, 2009 1

While Disney and Pixar have been putting together a big-budget version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars, due out in 2012, apparently the folks at the Asylum – who have churned out a number of low-budget direct-to-dvd Burroughs and Verne adapatations, as well as such cleverly-titled films as Transmorphers, Snakes on a Train, and AVH: Alien vs. Hunter – have been working their magic on the same source material with Princess of Mars, another direct-to-dvd extravaganza that I hadn’t even heard about until a passing reference on AICN this morning. (Here the main goal seems to be to hitch a ride on Avatar’s coattails; when the main Barsoom movie comes out, I imagine the Asylum will emit a sequel.)

You can see a trailer and some stills at this site. Yes, that’s Traci Lords as a blonde, white-skinned Dejah Thoris; and yes, those are two-armed tharks. Yes, this looks very bad. Yes, I’ll have to get it.

A People’s History of Pandora, Part 2

By on December 22, 2009 16

Libertarians are divided on Avatar (which I haven’t seen yet); check out Peter Suderman, Stephan Kinsella, Peter Klein, David Kramer, and Lester Hunt.

Lester writes, inter alia:

What makes the business corporation in this movie so evil? Well, it engages in the following practices: using military force to invade and conquer foreign lands, slaughtering wholesale numbers of the inhabitants and burning their dwellings, all in order to steal their property. … Gee, I thought, I can’t think of a single business corporation that engages in those particular practices. Office Depot doesn’t, and I’m pretty sure Microsoft and Dell Inc don’t either.

So in the comments section I responded:

I can’t think of many businesses that engage in those particular practices all on their own. But I can think of plenty of businesses that have either gotten governments to engage in those practices on their behalf (examples range from the East India Company to the United Fruit/Brands Company) or have themselves engaged in those practices on some government’s behalf (e.g. Blackwater, DynCorp).

You Complete Me!

By on December 16, 2009 1

This trailer for Iron Man 2 looks promising – especially the first half with Downey dissing the Senate and doing his likable-asshole shtick.

But as for this trailer for the Clash of the Titans remake, although I can tell the filmmakers have seen Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, and 300, I can’t actually tell whether it’s any good.

A People’s History of Pandora

By on December 15, 2009 4

Apparently the statist Right is exercised because Avatar is an “America-hating, PC revenge fantasy,” a “thinly disguised, heavy-handed and simplistic sci-fi fantasy/allegory critical of America from our founding straight through to the Iraq War.” So hey, another reason to see it.

The Change I’d Be Tempted to Make …

By on December 15, 2009 12

mystery man

… if I were rewriting Atlas Shrugged, or adapting it to movie form.

Sacrilege, I know. But here’s the idea: “John Galt” is just a pseudonym for Francisco d’Anconia.

Advantages:

  • It switches out a character that readers find hard to relate to and switches in a character that most readers love.
     
  • It doesn’t require us to suddenly transfer so much of our emotional investment to a character that isn’t introduced until the third act.
     
  • It simplifies the love quadrangle to a love triangle.
     
  • It gives added tension to Francisco’s friendship with Rearden.
     
  • By having Dagny end up with Francisco, it makes Francisco’s story less sad.

A disadvantage, from a left-libertarian standpoint, is that now the revolution is being run by two aristocrats (Francisco and Ragnar) rather than by the proletarian Galt. But maybe that problem could be ameliorated by boosting the role of the Brakeman, making him one of the triumvirate, and giving him some minor bits of Galt’s role. Who better to help stop the motor of the world than a brakeman, anyway?

The Thin Blue Line That Protects Us From Canadian Science Fiction Writers

By on December 13, 2009 3

Peter Watts writes:

If you buy into the Many Worlds Intepretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.

police brutality

Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.

In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.

But that is not this universe.

CHT Ken MacLeod and William Grigg. Updates here. To help Watts, see PayPal and snailmail donation info here. To ensure it never happens again, smash the state.

Powered by WordPress. Designed by WooThemes