Science Fiction: Two Things That Matter To Me

Well, gosh, thanks!

Any critical analysis? Meta raises a great point above about facts, fiction and lies. And it rolls trippingly off the tongue: Facts. Fiction. & Lies. (Oh, my!)

Silent Running [...] one of the worst movies ever.

Them's fightin' words around here, dude! :-)

At the least, you'll need to back it up with a little "why". (And what better place than a thread about judging SF? Bonus points if you can demonstrate that it breaks any of the Rules!)

I do agree that Rule #2 is the kicker. It was the breaking of Rule #2 that lead to the original Hate The Holodeck essay. Which lead to re-writing it for Newsvine. Which lead to the need for an article explaining Rule #2. Which lead to here!

Bruce Dern is a bad actor? I can't agree with that. The film was directed by Doug Trumbull, his first turn in the director's chair, so it may be that it wasn't the greatest direction in the world.

I think you need to keep Rule #1 in mind with a film like Silent Running. There's some very obvious nods to 2001: A Space Odyssey (on which Trumbull worked), and it also very much reflects the sensibilities of the time (1971). (Two songs by Joan Baez, the hippie Queen herself! :-)

you're telling me that the scientist tasked with keeping the last of Earth's forests alive forgets a little detail like "oh hey, plants need sunlight!" Must've slipped his mind. You know, in between talking to the dwarf-robots.

In the world of the film, we can gather that the only free plant life left was preserved in arboratums. The stuff on the ships was it! Pretty clearly these were astronauts, not plant scientists. Dern's character was–as Dern's characters so often are–the oddball. The different guy (so different, he actually murders his fellows).

And the dwarf robots were totally cool. Way advanced for the day, because Trumbull put actual amputees inside them, so they had life like no other robot to that date. I would guess that the drones gave some partial inspiration to R2D2.

In the same fashion Trumbull used a real aircraft carrier for the interiors (very obvious if you've ever been on one), so there's a nitty gritty realistic feel to the "spaceship" that had never been seen at that time.

If it didn't appeal to you, that's fair play, but to call it "one of the worst movies ever." That's pretty severe. I can think of hundreds and hundreds of worse movies!

..and the use of a solar illuminated dome to hold a terrarium-like environment.

And yet the dome had lights in it, too. It's also a bit of a crackup that Dern's character could save the trees from "winter" by setting up a few lights.

...I would store seeds, shoots, whatever, so as to maintain the most compact form.

In fact, humankind is doing this right now. I believe there's two projects. One in Norway and one in the antarctic.

But you can't get too analytical with the science in a movie like this. It's a movie with a message of the times and it's a movie with some (at the time) ground-breaking effects and ideas. (The drones were brilliant.)

Silent Running would likely fall into Ombra's "soft SF" category.

That's a good point. Back in the 50s and 60s it was mainly SF fans producing material for other SF fans. The Day The Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, Outer Limits; all labors more of love than of commerce.

I divide SF film into pre-Star Wars and post-Star Wars (A New Hope was released in 77). After Star Wars, everything changed and SF films became a viable mainstream commodity. Prior to that they were mostly a niche genre without much perceived fan base. (TOS, now a national treasure, a major franchise and a cultural icon, barely survived for a mere three years!)

Alien came along in 79, very much riding on the Star Wars wave. Blade Runner, in 82, was perhaps a little too weird and a little too deep (it's a Philip Dick novel, after all!) for most mainstream audiences.

So, right, Silent Running, which is pre-Star Wars (72), has to be seen in a different light. (It had been only a few years since we first walked on the moon!) Budgets were small; expectations were low. Part of what impresses me about Silent Running is how well Trumbull used his budget.

Thanks!

keep the science at a level that the common people can understand

Fair enough. Is it okay if there's a few books for us total science geeks? That stuff is like catnip to us!

Thank you.

I find too much confusion these days about what I would consider "SciFi"

That's kind of why I tacked that last bit onto the end. I'm familiar with the typical "hard SF" verses "soft SF" distinction, but your definition is a little different from that. I might quibble a little with which tales you put in which categories, but I agree with your point.

I think the fact that I could quibble with which goes where shows the line can be pretty fuzzy and personal. James P. Hogan writes some very hard SF, but I'd have a hard time quantifying many of his books as hard science or soft science. They are very human tales, many of them.

David Brin is another that is easily classified as hard SF, but I think I'd have to call him soft science, since his books are so "human". (And if you're familiar with his work, you know you just have to put "human" in quotes!)

Let me ask you this: Your list of SS books includes obvious SF Greats. Many people (myself included) would not include Matrix or Terminator among the SF Greats. Asimov and Clarke I would quibble over as SS rather than HS, so I'll ignore them for a moment.

My question is: on your own "greatness" scale, does SS actually equate to "superior" SF, or do you have what you'd consider Great SF in the HS classification? (Did that make sense? It seems tortuously asked.)

I ask because, as I was writing this comment, it began to strike me that (without giving this a huge amount of thought) what I consider the best SF is almost always SS SF. I love HS SF, but the love affair is a shallow one I think.

I shall have to give this further thought!

Thanks.

'Robinson Crusoe on Mars'

Wow, I haven't seen that in forever. Probably not since the last time I saw 20 Million Miles to Earth!

I did just pick up a DVD of One Million Years B.C.. The special effects were awfully good for the time, but truth be told, I mainly got it for its star. When I was younger, she was my "IT" gal, and I still think she's really something. ([sigh] There's just something about Latinas that sends me into orbit.)

[grin] You can always tell a computer programmer: they begin numbering their lists with zero!

((It's all because of "Indexing"; it makes us count funny. 0,1,2,3,... :-))

This article uses the new experimental Stealth Article Technology (eSAT). (pat. pend.)

Yoiks, I'm being Watched!

Well, I got my eye on you, too, kiddo!

...the "reasonable man" standard...

What would any reasonable person do in X situation? Yeah, that's a good yardstick and not measuring up to it bugs me, too.

It's similar to a Roger Ebert criteria that any plot problem that would instantly vanish, if the the characters just talked to each other normally, is a dumb plot problem. It can actually be sort of fun watching how hard characters sometimes have to work to avoid the obvious.

Isn't it interesting how many people became scientists or SF fans from Star Trek. It truly was an American cultural phenomenon. (Whoopi Goldberg campaigned for a role on TNG because of Nichelle Nichols. That TOS has a Russian, a (gay :-) Japanese man and a black woman in positions of rank and power was–for its day–pretty amazing.)

(For me, TOS was a case of, "Whoa!! My favorite kind of books are now a TV show!! YEA!!!")

So now I have an image of Chevy Chase on SNL doing that news bit where he lists a bunch of things.... and stops.

What about those TOS eps? Loved'm? Hated'm?

Given The City on the Edge of Forever, I'm hoping loved! :-)

(By Spock's Command do you mean The Galileo Seven or Spock's Brain?)

Yep. (Some consider "The Old Show/Series" as an alternative).

TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT should be self-evident.

One which may not be, and which you don't see often, is TAS—The Animated Series.

patriciaad is rarer than you know! She's a Piers Anthony fan!!

And I don't mean a Xanth fan. I mean an honest to gosh Piers Anthony fan!

You know, the old Piers Anthony before he got all weird and unicorny.

Sometimes, I just want to experience the movie (or writing) and get lost in it. If it left me with a very strong feeling, flowed well, didn't leave any unanswered questions, allowed me to get lost in the moment - then I say it was "well written," I guess.

That's very much the point of the essay and very much what /0 is saying.

Ideally, unless you decide to watch/read critically, a film/book should carry you away. Film, in particular, is dream-like and immersive.

When there's something–could be anything: bad acting, bad writing, bad effects–breaks you out of that willing fantasy, then that's a tale poorly told.

(The essay tries to touch on some aspects of the poverty.)

Yep. That's what I'm saying. You get it. You totally get it.

Is there anything that you're not good at?

Oh, if you only knew. Plenty!

Plen.
Tee.

Hi, thanks for dropping by.

I couldn't place the phot with the Great Moder SF caption. What is it from?

It's from a movie, called Dark City. If you follow that link to Wikipedia, you'll find a good starting place. Note that " Roger Ebert cited Dark City as the best film of 1998. In 2005, he included it on his "Great Movies" list."

And I agree! It's one of the best recent true SF films.

Sadly, I did the screen grab late at night after a long day, so I didn't get a very good image. I need to (gladly) watch the film again and pick better spots.

Ursula K. LeGuin

I agree she's an incredible writer, but Le Guin may be a bit too deep or edgy for mainstream SF. (Left Hand Of Darkness is a good example.) My personal favorite of hers is The Word for World Is Forest (ah, yet another book to pull off the shelf and queue :-).

The only adaptation of her work I knew about is Lathe Of Heaven, which was done twice. I've seen the first one, done by PBS, a couple times and liked it. No one I know likes the A&E version (after seeing their version of Andromeda Strain, I can guess why). The Wikipedia article I linked to mentions that Le Guin liked the first one, but not the second one!

FWIW, the main Wiki article says SciFi channel did the first two books of her Earthsea series, but it was "extremely poorly received by both readers of the books and Le Guin herself." The Wiki article also mentions an animated Earthsea series; you can read the deatails there.

Thanks again for joining the discussion! I hadn't thought about Le Guin in years!!

Anne McCaffrey. Her Crystal Singer series was captivating.

[grin] We do have similar tastes, don't we. I have the first two, but I can't recall if I ever read Crystal Line. The name doesn't ring any bells.

I was a big fan of McCaffery's early work. I was really into what that Wiki article calls the Brain & Brawn series (aka the "Ship" books), and I also really like her Talents series (the "Pegasus" books).

At some point, though, I got a little dragoned and Perned to death.

As I understand it, they'd learned that Trek fans paid close attention to this stuff in TOS, so for TNG they made a big effort to keep continuity pure (and largely succeeded to my eye). Even TOS had a "Writer's Bible" that tried to lay out all pertinent facts.

But, as /0 suggests, over the life of the show it's a lot to keep track of and to double-check in each script. Still, Steven's point is spot on. If a fan notices, why isn't there a fan on their payroll doing the noticing?

And that was my dream job! Science/Continuity checker guy for TNG. Oh, man, oh, man!

Congrats! You're dangerous now!! :-)

Hi! Thanks for dropping by.

Good point and some excellent examples. (Digression: Examples. It's like the first rule in a gunfight: bring a gun. First rule in a good discussion: bring examples! :-)

I suspect one place this can add dramatic value is when we're talking about stylistic rules rather than universe-defining rules. That is exactly Rule #0! :-)

Star Trek is a great example of how even universe-defining rules can change. I always liked the idea that going too fast with warp drive wrecked the universe. Maybe the important thing is maintaining some fidelity to the universe you've created.

It always seems to come back to the basic rule: don't make me mad. :-)

Certainly! It is relevant to any type of SF.

Close Encounters is an example of an SF movie that made me mad. How about you?