Science fiction love and hate - The Bear and Badger

Skade

I read Ballards Drowned World last year and really enjoyed it.

I fully endorse your post as spot on in all aspects.

Ps. A Boy and his Dog is best sci-fi.

Bollockoff

ShabbyMcCrabby wrote:

I love that Bollockoff manages to fit a spoiler into every single post he makes. Wuv.

It's a condition.

b0r1s

Good post there Stoph and that vid of Contact us brilliantly done. I remember a making of or commentary where they talked about how they comped the tracking shot onto the mirror. Watching it, you don't even think that it's FX, but so well done.

The car escape scene in CoM was also another brilliant shot. No spoilers but people should watch it just for that.

ShabbyMcCrabby

Zemeckis has done a bunch of fancy sure like that mirror one. There's some crackers in What Lies Beneath too. That's why it's a shame he's made so many shitty CG movies lately. Talent wasted.

Billy

Just watched Star Trek 4 that bit at the end where the whales go wild and the crew get in the water laughing heinously is directly as painful as the hobbit & dwarf gang bang at the end of the Lord of the rings.

Kow

I've always loved sci fi but never seen a good tv series (maybe old Doctor Who, maybe Sapphire and Steel). Philip k. Is top of the pile. I used to love Harry Harrison when I was a kid - The Stainless Steel Rat was a great series of books.

Skerret

Gap series is alright.

b0r1s

Skerret wrote:

Gap series is alright.

This

davyK

Kow wrote:

I've always loved sci fi but never seen a good tv series (maybe old Doctor Who, maybe Sapphire and Steel). Philip k. Is top of the pile. I used to love Harry Harrison when I was a kid - The Stainless Steel Rat was a great series of books.

2000AD did a Stainless Steel Rat story. - SSR Saves the World - based on lots of time travel trickery.

superflyninja

Watched The Martian at the weekend. It did ok. Some lovely shots of the the martian landscape but there wasn't enough sci-fi in there. Interstellar was similar enough in its tech of a few years down the road but it had a great big mystery behind it. The Martian was just about a marooned guy.

Kow

davyK wrote:

Kow wrote:

I've always loved sci fi but never seen a good tv series (maybe old Doctor Who, maybe Sapphire and Steel). Philip k. Is top of the pile. I used to love Harry Harrison when I was a kid - The Stainless Steel Rat was a great series of books.

2000AD did a Stainless Steel Rat story. - SSR Saves the World - based on lots of time travel trickery.

Yeah, I remember reading it back at the beginning of the eighties. I got into 2000ad because they had a series based on a book I already loved.

Billy

superflyninja wrote:

Watched The Martian at the weekend. It did ok. Some lovely shots of the the martian landscape but there wasn't enough sci-fi in there. Interstellar was similar enough in its tech of a few years down the road but it had a great big mystery behind it. The Martian was just about a marooned guy.

I think a lot of the appeal rested on if you like Matt Damon enough, if you don't then it's not hugely exciting really.

b0r1s

It's a pleasant film, with the Matt factor being an important part and more light hearted than I expected going in.

Tempy

superflyninja wrote:

The Martian was just about a marooned guy.

Well yes that is literally the plot

superflyninja

Yes. Just saying that the near future thing isnt interesting enough on its own imo.

Kow

I would consider both Under the Skin and The Lobster to be science fiction. Dystopian alternative realities are my favourite sci fi - see Aldous Huxley et al.

Tempy

@super I have no idea what you mean. It's a film based on a book about practical science helping a man survive on a hostile planet, it was never advertised as anything more or less than this.

superflyninja

I was fully aware what The Martian was about before watching. Is this thread not about the various types of sci-fi people are into? Just saying that it didnt tickle my sci-fi bone,needed more outlandish elements for me to dig it. But as a film it was perfectly fine.

Billy

I agree Mr Ninja, enjoyable but probably wouldn't watch again.

Kazuo

Wasn't aware that Europe in Autumn was part of an ongoing series. Had thought the first was fantastic in concept but unravelled horribly by the end. Will seek out Part 2 and see if it's redemptive, cheers thread for the heads up.

poprock

Rewatched Monsters yesterday, forgot how enjoyable it is. Asks a simple, standard, sci-fi question: What if we knew alien life existed? How would a world where that was our normality look and feel? In hindsight, Monsters sits as a smarter, calmer, companion piece to District 9.

The recent sequel looks shit, though.

tigersgogrrr

Some great posts in here. Really interesting.

I grew up watching Star Trek and have always preferred it to Star Wars. I have a fondness for Space Magic and Light Sabres but that comes more from KOTOR than from the original films which I've always thought a bit boring. Darth Vader is a great bad guy though, no doubt.

I have always been a fantasy guy but for my videogames I prefer science fiction nowadays. I think it's because so much traditional vidja gameplay translates better - ranged vs melee being the thing. I despise most fantasy films though and I'm quite anti-Tolkien, despite my love of fantasy being born of Tolkienite stuff like DnD and Warhammer. I don't like LOTR books (though I liked the films) and I despised The Hobbit films (though I liked the book). Science Fiction has been far better over the years, I feel, and I adored Moon.

Literature wise, Philip K. Dick, Asimov, and Wyndham are my favourites. Banks is great too but I've only read a couple of Culture novels. I like space opera so I should partake more often. John Wyndham in particular is my favourite. I must have read most of his work 4-5 times in my teens, with The Trouble with Lichen and The Kraken Wakes being particularly enjoyable.

Kow

I've never considered star wars or star trek to be science fiction really. I don't think putting a space ship in something automatically makes it science fiction. Space soap opera maybe.

tigersgogrrr

Certainly not hard science fiction, but I think space opera comes under the sci-fi banner.

Kow

Possibly, just not in my filing system.

tigersgogrrr

K is for Kow what kind of filing system do you use, eh?

Billy

Call it what you want but Star wars and Trek are Sci fi to most....

science fiction
noun
noun: science fiction; noun: SF; modifier noun: science-fiction
[ol][li]fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.

[/li][/ol]

[ol][/ol]

Kow

I file them under S is for shite.

regmcfly

I'm another alt world guy, Brave New World first edition cover occupied my classroom wall for years, and I have a lovely 1930s edition. Love the speculative stuff perhaps more than simple "move fantasy to another planet" game. I always remember the mantra from an old teacher of mine that "good Sci fi warns us what to change now in order to fix the future" and am much more interested in that sphere.

That's where things like Infinite Jest or Inverted World fall in for me - portents of the world to come rather than just exploring outta space. Even the best Banks stuff, like Excession, investigates what happens when we move further and further from face to face contact.
Richard Morgan is a guy who overdoes the pudding almost every other paragraph, but his views on pornography and what can be acceptable are also really interesting.

Billy

well i fucked that paste up didn't i.

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