Showing posts with label SF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SF. Show all posts

2012/07/12

The Reading List: Charles Stross - The Apocalypse Codex

I first became aware of Charlie Stross by way of Acclerando, a collection of nine short stories telling the tale of three generations of a family before, during, and after a technological singularity. It's an absolute riot of ideas and blew my mind several times over. You can grab a free copy of it online in several formats.

Incidentally, he has made a lot of his earlier work available online, like a short story collection, an unsold novel, and several other bits and pieces all over the web.

Anyway from there I read the Laundry Files, a set of Lovecraftian spy thrillers mixing SF, horror, the occult, IT and British government bureaucracy. An interesting mix to be sure. The Apocalypse Codex is the fourth and latest installment in the series and is pointless to read without having read the other ones first. Which I recommend you do - I still think the first in the series is the strongest. If you want to get a taste of what this strange and heady mix is first, there are three short stories set in the same universe available to read for free online (1,2,3).

If you do like the Laundry Files, this latest one is a blast. It assumes you're already aware of who Bob Howard is and what goes on in the Laundry universe, so it does away with much of the exposition and instead offers a rollercoaster plot which had me finish the thing in a day neglecting much of my other duties. I generally hate spy thrillers but as it turns out I do like parodies of it (clever ones, not Mike Myers ones) and Bob is in many ways the anti-spy: not suave, not in control, and not a big hit with the ladies, although he is now married to a powerful sorceress whom he rescued from terrorists who were messing with stuff occultist Nazis who fled to a parallel world left behind... you know what, read the books.

2012/06/14

Movietime: Prometheus

A lot of people seem to be hung up on or disappointed in this movie, I don't really get it. I mean yes, it would have been far better if I had just walked out for the last 10 minutes and missed the grating sequel setup, not to mention the annoying "getting crushed by a giant spaceship because you're dumb" scene, and yes, forget about the aliens having inscrutable motivations, half the time I didn't even know why the humans (and robot) did what they did but after all that and a huge run-on sentence I really did enjoy watching it. Especially on IMAX, it was huge and impressive and Ridley knows how to get that shot across. The whole story wasn't as grand as I had hoped or as deep as I had liked, and perhaps this is what disappointed some. It was sort of implied to be both by all the trailers and interviews etc. leading up to it. Still, well worth giving it a go.

Rating: *****
Comment: pretty solid SF flick with some beautiful shots and a few nods to Alien

2012/06/02

Movietime: Iron Sky

Space Nazis - who fled to the dark side of the moon after 1945 - build a space fleet and come back to conquer the earth with giant space zeppelins towing meteors to throw on cities. There is nothing about that sentence I don't like. Sadly, the movie doesn't execute this bizarre yet humorous premise very well. The jokes fall flat, the story wanders all over the place, and the pacing is off. The CGI is pretty well done though, especially for what is essentially a very low-budget movie. All in all it's a shame, I feel there is a better movie hiding in there somewhere.
Rating: *****
Comment: I had such high hopes when I heard "space Nazis"

2012/05/22

Movietime: Battleship

Hasbro, the games company which brought you Transformers, has now made an entire feature-length movie about the game "battleship", you know, where you take turns guessing where the other player's ships are on a grid. They added aliens to make it more interesting.

Can I get off this planet now?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440129/ 

Rating: *****
Comment: I can't believe I watched this garbage