Notices tagged with scifi, page 3

Season 1 of Counterpart is one of the best television shows I've watched this year. 7.5/10

#counterpart #coldwar #spy #thriller #scifi #jksimmons

The Old Guard was a passable action film. Charlize Theron has definitely perfected the "looking emotionally scarred" thing.

#theoldguard #scifi #action #movies #film #netflix

The second season finale of Future Man is honestly one of the best pieces of television I've seen in a long time.

#futureman #scifi #comedy #timetravel #hulu

Just watched the first episode of a #UK #SciFi series called #TheFeed. Imagine a whole series based off that episode of #BlackMirror where everyone has a chip recording their memories, and giving them a #HUD they can control with their thoughts. The characters are well written and the performances are natural and engaging. I'm intrigued enough to keep watching.

"Between the feeling of individual failure and the conspicuous display of national prosperity lies an unbridgeable chasm. The result is a division of the population into two extremes: one side rebels against the government reflexively (sometimes without knowing what its 'cause' is) and trusts nothing it says; the other side retreats into nationalism to give itself the sense of mastering its own fate."
- #ChenQuifan, 'The Torn Generation', published in the 'Invisible Planets' #SciFi anthology

I watched the first two episodes of Devs last night. It smells a lot like Ex-Machina, which I've tried several times to watch, but I could never finish because it gets on my nerves. Apparently Alex Garland still thinks that groundbreaking innovations come from eccentric billionaires obsessed with unconventional architecture. However, I like Nick Offerman a lot and I've never seen him in a dramatic role, so I'm giving it a chance. It's interesting so far, but I feel like at any moment something could happen that makes my eyes roll so hard that I turn it off. We'll see.

#devs #alexgarland #nickofferman #tv #scifi

I started reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. The main character's native language doesn't have gendered pronouns, and although they're fluent in languages that do, they apparently also have trouble discerning people's gender. As a result, they refer to everyone using feminine pronouns. I'm not sure if there's an ultimate purpose to this in the story, or if it's just an authorial flourish.

For a while now, I've said the best solution to the "preferred pronouns" quagmire is to switch to using a single set of neutral pronouns for everyone, reasoning that in most communication, the subject's gender is irrelevant, and in corner cases there are other ways to denote it. However, I must say that when reading a book where this is effectively the practice (and the author's also not big on physical descriptions) it's confusing as fuck. (This is compounded slightly by the fact that other characters in the book don't share the POV's gender-blindness and do use gendered pronouns, so sometimes a single person is referred to as both "he" and "she" in the same conversation.)

I guess ultimately the characters' genders don't matter to the story. Perhaps this is the point the author's trying to make. However, my gender-habituated brain has a hard time forming a mental model of the characters without this information. It makes it a frustrating read, as I'm constantly distracted by the dissonance.

So, maybe my idea about pronouns is a bad one. Or maybe it just falls down in circumstances like this. Or maybe the author is just being a pain in the ass. I have no conclusions.

#annleckie #scifi #gender #language

Did Altered Carbon go off-book this season? The writing seems a lot less smart.

#alteredcarbon #scifi #netflix

Oh snap! Altered Carbon season 2 is out!

#netflix #scifi #cybernoir

I watched season 4 of The Expanse this weekend, which I'd been anticipating highly. I'll try to summarize my thoughts without getting into specifics. I know some people's definition of "spoiler" is a lot more severe than others. If you're an extremist, you should probably stop reading this now.

First, a comment on the changes to the show now that it's on Amazon: We were told that being off basic cable meant that they didn't need to censor the content, or fit inside a 60 minutes-minus-commercials time frame for each episode. That said, the episodes were still pretty much 45-50 minutes each, and not censoring means they just said "fuck" a lot more. No real huge departures here in terms of format. Also of note: The weird kind of cheap-looking hydroponic thing in the Roci's galley has been replaced by something that looks less like a flimsy prop with plastic plants and more like something functional. I guess Amazon let them spend a few extra bucks :P

The season is broken down into four plot-lines: The Roci crew on Ilus/New Terra, Bobbie on Mars, Ashford and Drummer in the Belt, and Avasarala on Earth. Aside from the first one, none of these are really in book four. Bobbie's story was her side adventure from Gods of Risk, but greatly expanded, but the others were pretty much original material. On the whole, I thought those three side-plots were kind of dull. Having read the whole series to date and knowing what's going to happen, it's clear they're designed to set stuff up for the events of season 5. Besides moving pieces on the board and laying some groundwork for the future, they didn't bring much to the table. They'll pay off next season, but I would have liked a little less in favor of more of the main story.

I thought the main plotline on Ilus was done very well. They could have taken their time on it a bit more, but I was happy overall. The look of the planet, the settlement, and the alien structures was very close to the way I'd pictured it when reading. Almost uncannily so. The only place where it fell a little flat was at the big climax, which seemed like it was down-scaled for no other reason than to contain the CGI costs. Disappointing, but forgivable.

Overall, I liked it. Not as much as previous seasons, but the book it's based on is kind of an outlier in the series and was probably tricky to adapt. After three seasons with an ensemble cast jumping all around the solar system, this season's main action took place with a small group of characters telling a small story in a single location. It didn't have the same energy or intensity as previous seasons, but neither did the source material. I expect season 5 will get us back to The Expanse we're more familiar with, and holy shit it's going to blow people's minds.

#theexpanse #jamessacorey #scifi #television #amazon

Enjoying season 4. It's minor, but I really dislike the re-cast for Arjun Avasarala 😒

#theexpanse #jamessacorey #scifi

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Y8F9bqttmg

#theexpanse #scifi #jamessacorey #adamsavage

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=meU8GVaAYoA

Home stretch.

#theexpanse #tv #jamessacorey #altshiftx #scifi

I just read the final missing piece in the as yet published Expanse series: The Vital Abyss. It makes the character of Cortazar much more of a person. I really like how the novellas add more backstory and world-building that wouldn't necessarily fit well in the main narrative. Good stuff.

#theexpanse #jamessacorey #scifi

@Aerdan hey I just did an image search and I see what you mean. That thing looks like it came right out of #Automan! I'm starting to suspect #ElonMusk watched the same cheesy #SciFi #TV shows I did as a kid. I wonder if there will be a #Tesla Cyberbike that looks like the #Streethawk bike? Although I guess the #Tron #lightcycle is the obvious design inspiration for that ;)

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=TFdzpVt5rbk

#theexpanse #jamessacorey #scifi

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5Jc76QrX5Vg

#theexpanse #jamessacorey #scifi #tv