Science Fiction Observer

Dune with no dialog via Boing Boing

2011-07-18T09:06:00.000+01:00

This post is also available in Macedonian | Овој пост е достапен и на македонски
- преку Блогспот: Дина без дијалог на Боинг Боинг
- преку Блогерај: Дина без дијалог на Боинг Боинг

Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza wonders whether if you remove all the scenes with dialog, one can get a better version of the film Dune by David Lynch than the producers' cut. As an experiment, he used this notion to assemble a short clip of the intro scenes, available on YouTube and Vimeo.

Dune with no dialog

According to Beschizza, the complicated dialogs confuse the public which mainly consists of people who haven't read the original book and do not necessarily remember all the relations from it well enough to make out what's going on at a certain moment. In addition, the director's cut versions usually turn out much longer, which additionally exasperates the audience.

Can this approach be taken as an instance of the recommendation from another book about human relations, The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, who says: "Always say less than necessary."

Military Robots to Become More Humanoid

2011-07-05T23:31:00.003+01:00

In a recent Wired article (April 2011) "The Trouble With Humanoid Droids," Brendan I. Koemer advocates the need to make military robots look less human, in order to facilitate the feeling of responsibility by their remote-control operators. Namely, the robot operators tend to dissociate themselves more from the task performed by a robot if the robot looks more like a human, while "utalitarian" robots make operators more responsible because they make them feel they use just sophisticated tools, not partners.

“The humanoid form is such a powerful social cue,” Groom says. “If you see this humanoid shape, you’re going to respond to it like it’s a person.”

That response is precisely what the military must discourage among the humans who will be directing tomorrow’s robot army. Those weapons operators will need to understand that they, not their robots, bear the ultimate responsibility for what goes down on the battlefield. Robot designers can help foster that mindset by resisting the urge to anthropomorphize droids destined for service in combat zones. Make them look like killing machines, not friends.

Respect for this moralistic effort, but it sounds quite naive and hollow. The history of military technology development consists of creating weapons which increasingly "liberate" those who wield them from precisely this kind of responsibility. The effect of killing another human being with one's hands or a pistol are the same - a dead body. However, physical and psychological effort invested by the killer in each of these cases significantly differ.

According to Macedonian folk tale, when mace and sword specialist King Marko was shown a firearm, he said sorrowfully "Now the smallest child can kill the greatest hero." And pushing a(n infamous red) button requires much less prowess than pulling the trigger.

Nazis used the gas chambers to lower the level of stress of their soldiers who previously used to kill the "undesirables" by machine guns. In the wars U.S.A./NATO have waged since the 1990s, use of video-game-like interface for bombers greatly facilitated the feeling that the "collateral" damage done in target countries is not so real (combined with counting only "our" casualties).

All in all, if making more humanoid robots would lead to increasing effectiveness through lowering levels of stress, post-traumatic disorder or pangs of conscience for the soldiers, the military would make it so. In retrospect, all bloodshed is needless. If the armies were more interested in the moral aspects than meeting the (unquestioned) goals set by their political masters, no war would start in the first place. Therefore, expect not only anthropomorphic military robots soon - expect gorgeous humanoid droids. On killing sprees.

An Introduction to Science Fiction in Peru

2011-04-04T11:37:00.007+01:00

by Daniel Salvo

(This article was first published on Inter Nova)

The image of science fiction that readers usually have in mind does not correspond to the definitions created by the genre’s authors or literary critics. In fact, the prevailing concept of science fiction is the one made popular in the USA during the twenties and thirties when pulp literature — which was oriented towards action and adventure, with stereotyped characters and a simple writing-style — boomed. This popularisation period can’t be dismissed, since it contributed to the spread of science fiction, although only in its space opera version. The negative side of its popularity at that time is that it stigmatised the entire genre to the point that it is now very difficult for most people, especially English-speaking people, to consider science fiction a serious literary genre.

Possessing a massive bulk of imaginary concepts and a kind of pedantry on the verge of ignorance, science fiction has been looked at with distrust or even ignored completely by writers, critics and scholars.

As an example, we can mention the lectures given in literature classes at schools and universities. With some luck, science fiction may be mentioned by some other name or treated as sub-literature; otherwise, it is absurdly included in completely different categories, and so The Lord of the Rings has in one instance turned out to be a “marvellous reality” novel.

With such a background, the apparent absence of the science fiction genre in our country becomes logical. Either we take for granted that the texts must be pulp, space opera, sub-literature, or a lack of understanding of the genre and its potential has made the texts written so far go unnoticed. When researchers — even with a college degree — are asked about Peruvian science fiction authors, they prefer, instead of accepting their ignorance, to evade the subject or energetically claim that no Peruvian author has ever written science fiction.

So, what is science fiction? Where does it come from? Even though the term “science fiction”, created by Hugo Gernsback, has been used since the early 20th century, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley´s Frankenstein is considered to be the antecedent of the genre. The novel’s plot is well-known: a scientist from Geneva, Victor von Frankenstein, in his wish to liberate humanity from the anguish caused by death, gives life to a creature made from human corpses, using the science at hand in his time (late 18th century). Since this is a reaction to the scientific breakthroughs of the period, it is not a supernatural horror novel. It examines the social changes gripping the lives of Mary Shelley and her contemporaries within the context of science, and is thus akin to what we call science fiction today, because one of the genre’s characteristics is, besides a sense of wonder, a critical literary examination of the impact scientific and technical discoveries have on the human race.

Considering the events that took place in the 19th century, both in the technical and the political fields, what every writer, no matter where from, needed to ask herself was what will the future be? People in the nineteenth century (or at least Westerners) saw daily the miracles (and the disgraces) of the industrial revolution: electricity, telephones, automatic weapons. And as they witnessed this rapid progress they were also made aware of the great changes in their lives because it.

The same was true for Peru in the nineteenth century. We started this historic period with the gestation of independence movements that ended with the establishment of a republic. At the same time, a modernization process was started to match the times. The Peruvians of that period, many of them educated the European way, had the same perspective as their peers in Europe or the USA.

Therefore we have, for example, the early case of what is considered to be the second novel ever published in republican Peru, called Lima de aquí a cien años (Lima One Hundred Years From Now), by Juan Manuel del Portillo, Juan Manuel Portillo or Julián Portillo (there are no precise records about the author’s name), published by El Comercio newspaper in 1843. The commentary on this novel is not very favourable; it has even been said that it deserves oblivion. But can we speculate that this novel intended to anticipate the future? Its title seems to give a clue.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the science fiction short story was born in our country. The author who started the tradition was Clemente Palma (1872-1946), an author who has been the object of different literary studies, both in Peru and abroad. However, his role as the precursor or initiator of the science fiction movement in Peru has seldom been emphasized enough.

In fact, Clemente Palma wrote two stories and a novel with all the genre’s characteristics. For example, they speculate about the future, and the reaction of humankind to a seismic catastrophe and experiments duplicating human beings.

Cuentos malévolos (Evil Stories, 1904 [published in English as Malignant Tales in 1988]) includes “La última rubia” (“The Last Blonde Woman”), set in the year 3025, when gold has disappeared from the planet, esperanto is the universal language, and all the other races have been absorbed by the Mongols and Tartars. However, there are some remnants of the white race, which the last blonde woman of the title belongs to.

Later, and on the occasion of a Halley’s Comet sighting, Clemente Palma, under the pseudonym of “Klingsor”, published “El día trágico” (“The Tragic Day”) in the magazine Ilustración Peruana during the months of April and May 1910. This story reflects the collective hysteria and fear the human race felt due to the nearness of the comet, which was supposed to cause terrible catastrophes. Oliverio Stuart, the main character, together with his wife and mother-in-law, turn out to be the only survivors of a worldwide poisoning caused by the cyanogen gas that composed the comet’s tail. Locked in their bunker with enough oxygen and supplies, they witness the deadly silence that engulfs the planet they inherit.

XYZ deserves a special mention. A novel, it was first published in 1934 and described as “grotesque” by the author himself. The title does not say much about the plot or the characters, and maybe that is the reason why this novel has been unfairly forgotten. “XYZ” is the nickname for Rolland Poe, a Peruvian inventor who develops an early taste for algebra. Using radium and albumin from eggs, he invents a machine that can duplicate Hollywood actors (among others, there is a strange reproduction of Maurice Chevalier, forty centimetres tall). Once the existence of these duplicates is discovered on an island, the “originals” and other actors start a rescue operation that ends with the inventor’s suicide.

The Peruvian literary production after that, as is well-known, followed other paths, and little or no memories of Clemente Palma’s work remain. Nevertheless, it was hard for our authors to ignore science fiction. Nearly two decades after XYZ, we observe that speculations about the future and the effects of technology play a part in some writers’ themes, although not to the same extent as works by Anglo-Americans in the same period. In our country, a “professional science fiction writer” figurehead has yet to appear — it is even possible that a “professional writer” does not yet exist, either.

In 1950, Héctor Velarde (1898-1989), a humorist and architect, and author of different chronicles and essays about Lima´s idiosyncrasy, sarcastically dealt with the so-called modernity incarnated by the US’s growth into a first-world power (and the subsequent worldwide spread of the American way of life): the first supermarkets appear, but also an unmistakable fear of the atomic bomb. In his book La cortina de lata (The Tin Curtain, 1950), Velarde includes a play set in the year 2427, called “Un hombre con tongo” (“A Man With Tongo”). The author describes the city of Lima as follows: “Far away, an astronomical observatory showing an enormous stratospheric cannon. City expression like (H.G.) Wells´. Autogyros, air-taxis, elevated trains, bridges over buildings, landing terraces, towers.” Catholic priests wear antennae, elderly people can rejuvenate, ladies go shopping at the “Jirón de la Unión” impelled to do so by helixes fixed to their backs, and it’s possible to travel to the moon by being shot by a cannon. In another volume, titled La perra en el satellite (The Dog in the Satellite, 1958), Velarde includes the story “La Bomba” (“The Bomb”). In it the dreaded total destruction to be caused by a nuclear bomb deployment will miss one target: the residence of a lawyer and diplomat in Lima, who will turn out to be the last man on Earth, knowing he will not survive very long.

In the same decade of 1950, the works of Eugenio Alarco suddenly and surprisingly burst onto the scene. In 1952, Alarco — a humanist, historian and philosopher — published his novel La magia de los mundos (Magic of the Worlds), in which two twentieth century astronauts, survivors of a kind of stellar shipwreck on an asteroid, are brought back to life at a time when the human race has expanded throughout the solar system. A curiosity: in this distant future, human beings wear super-suits that allow them to fly. These suits are translucent, so their owners appear to be completely nude.

In the sixties, another novel by Eugenio Alarco, called Los mortales (The Mortals), published in 1966, stands alone. As a kind of sequel to La magia de los mundos, it takes place in the same universe but on other worlds, and shows the other side of progress. It reveals that just a few humans are able to access immortality and other benefits of the future, while the majority of mortals remain excluded.

The sixties decade probably saw the greatest boom of science fiction in our country. The outstanding authors of the time are José B. Adolph, Juan Rivera Saavedra and José Manuel Estremadoyro.

A review of José B. Adolph´s work deserves a separate article. From his first publication, he has covered a wide range of different genres, including science fiction. He has written about artificial intelligence in Artemio y MULTICAL (Artemio and MULTICAL), the evolution animals in La rata (The Rat), immortality in Nosotros no (Not Us), contact with extraterrestrial beings in Los bromistas (The Jokers). His most abundant work comprising science fiction stories may be his book Hasta que la muerte (“Till Death, 1971), which includes the story “El falsificador” (“The Forger”), which was also included in the Latin American Science Fiction Anthology Cosmos Latinos, published by the University of Texas in 2003. In 1977, Adolph published a novel, Mañana las ratas (Tomorrow the Rats), that shows a completely balkanised and anaemic Peru, ruled by trans-national companies, the directors of which live on satellites orbiting the Earth.

In 1976 Juan Rivera Saavedra published his Cuentos sociales de ciencia-ficción (Social Science Fiction Stories) – ironic stories about the human condition. Throughout them, Rivera Saavedra explores topics such as our relationships with robots, the exploration of other planets, racism and food shortage.

In a space opera mood, José Manuel Estremadoyro published Glasskán, el planeta maravilloso (Glasskán, the Wonder planet) and its sequel Los homos y la Tierra (Homos and Earth) in 1971. In the first novel he describes a journey to a planet where everything is perfect, in the way of the great renaissance utopias. In the second, the humans trained by the galacsins (dwellers of Glasskán) must return to our planet to offer peace and progress to humanity, Glasskán style. Since they can’t find anybody who deserves such gifts, they devote themselves to living out a series of terribly absurd adventures.

In the nineties, Giancarlo Stagnaro published Hiperespacios (Hyperspaces, 1990), a space adventure novel worthy of Isaac Asimov.

In the late nineties Un único desierto (Only One Desert, 1997) by Enrique Prochazca was published. It compiled an assorted selection of stories with innovative topics, including “2984”, a story where the distopian world created by Orwell in “1984” continues to exist in the future, and “Happy End”, where we witness the end of the human race due to an intentionally provoked catastrophe.

Also in 1997, in Chiclayo City, Carlos Bancayón Llontop published his book Las formas (The Forms), in an almost hand-made edition. Among others, this volume includes the stories “Nutrición” (“Nutrition”) and “Las formas”, a speculation about the place of man in the universe, and mental powers used to investigate the past, which reveals amazing facts about the life of an important religious figure.

The rise of the Internet in our country has allowed for the electronic production of stories and novels. With web pages devoted to Peruvian science fiction, we have been able to become better acquainted with new authors: Rubén Mesías Cornejo, José Donayre Hoefken, José de Piérola, Adriana Alarco and others.

The year 2003 was bountiful for science fiction: José B. Adolph published his novel Un ejército de locos (An Army of Madmen), about an Apocalypse unleashed via the Internet, and the story selection Los fines del mundo (The Ends of the World), which includes several science fiction stories. Meanwhile, Juan Rivera Saavedra published Oprimidos y exprimidos (Opressed and Exploited) with some genre stories. Finally, Manuel Antonio Cuba published his book 8+1, nine science fiction stories dealing with different topics, such as extraterrestrial exploration, the future of Earth, and communication with machines.

2004 was also lavish in electronic publications. New voices appeared, like Iván Paredes and Pedro Novoa, while Manuel Antonio Cuba published a new short story collection, Desde afuera (From Outside).

Some final information: the writer of this article has published the stories “El amante de Irene” (“Irene´s lover”) and “El nombre no es importante” (“The name is not important”). He has also collaborated on articles about the science fiction genre in the electronic literary magazine El hablador and in the magazine Ajos y Zafiros.

References:

Mora, Gabriela: Clemente Palma: el modernismo en su verisón decadente y gótica, Institute of Peruvian Studies, Lima 2000.
Palma, Clemente: Cuentos malévolos. Ediciones PEISA, Lima 1974. Including: Introduction by Augusto Tamayo Vargas, prologue by Miguel de Unamuno (reprint of the first edition, published by Salvat, Barcelona 1904).
Palma, Clemente and Tellería Solari, María: Crónicas del Halley, edited by María Tellería Solari, Lima 1989, including the stories “El día trágico” by Clemente Palma and “El testamento de Chantecler” and “Una visita al paraíso” by María Tellería Solari (“El día trágico” was originally published in instalments of the magazine Ilustración Peruana in April and May, 1910.)

Daniel Salvo was born in Peru in 1967. After a degree in law he worked in a legal news magazine. In 2002 he started to edit Ciencia Ficción Perú, a website with articles on Peruvian science fiction. In 2005 he founded, in collaboration with some fellow witers, Coyllur, the Peruvian Association of Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy. He is currently collecting notes and data about Peruvian science fiction writers and plans to publish an anthology with the temptative title En las ruinas de Utopia.

Colombia: Fractal, a Sci-Fi event in Medellín

2011-03-30T20:25:00.000+01:00

Juan Diego Gómez posts in his blog about Fractal'11, an event about fiction, art, science and technology that will take place in Medellín, Colombia, on April 8-9, 2011. Juan Diego introduces [es] some of the speakers: awarded Science Fiction writer Kij Johnson, cyborg anthropologist Amber Case, researcher Johanna Blakley, creative technologist James Alliban, and musician Sam Pool aka SPL.

Written by Juan Arellano, first published on Global Voices Online, March 30, 2011 using Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.
Reddit it.

Lybia as Arrakis, Ghadaffi as Harkonen?

2011-02-26T01:45:00.010+01:00

An editorial titled "Arrakis" [MKD] by Mitko Biljanovski, published in Macedonian daily Dnevnik (Wed, Feb 23, 2011) claims that in Dune (1965) Frank Herbert inadvertently...

"...prophesied the destiny of a [then-] young and ambitious officer... who would grow into a colonel who will be saluted by generals and statesmen, an eccentric who would prefer a thoroughbred camel to a limo... with a charming-brutal Amazon guard of 40 virgins, trained to use all kinds of weapons and martial arts."

Biljanovski likens the Ghadaffis to Harkonens, drawing direct parallels between the oil beneath the sands of Lybia to the spice melange that powers the interstellar travel of the world of Dune (links added).

The brutal bloodshed, thousands of victims, bombed protesters, hiring mercenaries to beat up the people, and the restrained reactions from international community, make clear that the "Guild" will tolerate the contemporary baron, colonel Ghadaffi, as long as he controls the huge quantites of "spice" under the dunes of Sahara.

"He who controls the spice, controls the universe!" - Herbert wrote [probably most famous quote of Baron Vladimir Harkonen].

Rebelions in North Africa and the Middle East, and the fall of autocratic leaders in Tunisia and Egypt faced the western civilisation with the uncomfortable truth - it turned a blind eye towards the undemocratic regimes in the Mediterranean, preferring stability and order, and moreover, the natural gas and the oil. [Western] Europe which piled its treasures during the era of colonialism also faced wars and autocratic regimes on its Eastern and Southern borders not so long ago, and persistently promotes democracy, human rights and rule of law as universal values. However, it quietly encouraged autocratic regimes on the opposite shores of the Mediterranean--with lucrative trade deals, investments and credits--as a protection against the potential chaos: wars, impoverished refugees, surge of militants... Enriching the ruling elites in North Africa, while the people grew poorer and more frustrated. Anger spilled in January, from Morocco to Iran. The irreplaceable Ben Ali and Mubarak fell, but the dominoes stopped at Ghadaffi, the first despot determined to defend his rule till the last bullet.

If we except the usual expressions of concern and calls against use of brutal force against protesters, Europe and America remain silent, because Ghadaffi's fall means the loss of guarantees for favorable energy deals, deals to stop the waves of immigrants, and forcible actions to root out radical Islamic groups.

While I write these lines, Ghadaffi still controls half of Lybia. If he falls, he will be just one more domino. But if he saves his hide with his tanks and airplanes, he will provide ["best practice"] example for the shaken autocratic regimes of Yemen, Bahrain, Oman, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iran... showing them they can survive by using tanks against protesters. The Guild already gathered in Abu Dhabi, where the annual fair of defense technologies and weapons ends today. Americans, British and Russians sell various weapons to the Arab sheiks and sultans, from assault rifles to tanks and airplanes. Just like they sold to Mubarak and Ghadaffi.

As long as the Guild depends on the spice, Arrakis will be a doomed planet.

A reminder: kings and other kinds of hereditary aristocracy by definition are dictators. Dictators for life, whose "right" to rule comes from of being God's appointees on Earth, in collusion with legalized nepotism - their status comes from their genes, i.e. who they or their parents are, not from their merit.

Update: The U.S.A. introduced sanctions against Lybia.

Bruce Sterling @ University & Cyberspace

2010-09-26T13:43:00.006+01:00

Bruce Sterling gave a great speech about the term and the concepts of cyberspace at the COMMUNIA 2010 Conference: University & Cyberspace that took place in Turin, Italy, 30 June 2010.

The speech is available online in video format via the conference website. Click on the link "(00h 28m 00s)" on the webpage bellow the video to set it to the right minute.

Not in the video: during the speech Bruce mentions the U.S. Air Force Cyberspace Operator Badge, which you can see on the photo bellow.

After Sterling, David Orban from Humanity+ & Singularity University also gave an inspirational speech, which is also available online on the page above. I took this joyful photo of the two of them during the break a little later.

Both photos were taken on the grounds of the Politechnico in Turin. In the background you can see the bust of Giovanni Agnelli, founder of FIAT, obviously a revered figure in this Italian motor-town, like I assume Henry Ford would be in Detroit.

More "authentic" Jesus in sci-fi

2010-07-13T14:47:00.005+01:00

From time to time Christians world over act surprised about the notion that the usual image of tall, slender, long-haired and pretty pale Jesus does not confirm with the fact that he was a Jew from Palestine and shared the attributes of that ethnic group two thousand years ago. However, two examples show that science fiction authors were quite mindful of the historical and anthropological context.

Through links provided by Vladimir Simovski, it is quite obvious that presentations of Jesus, like those of various other shared iconic characters tend to reflect the influences of time and cultures that use them. On the other hand, forensic anthropological research conducted in 2000 reconstructed "The real face of Jesus" (PDF), based on data from the Scriptures which present him as "an average I century Joe," no different from his contemporaries: somewhat short, muscular, dark-skinned, curly-haired and bearded Semites.

The character of Jesus appears in the novelette Riverworld (1966) by Philip José Farmer. Widelly acclaimed as one of the best pieces of the series with the same name, based on the premise that alien intelligence resurrects all humans on a single planet, it juxtaposes the pacifist Joshua ben Joseph with the short, dark, green-eyed cowboy actor Tom Mix.

John Kessel's Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997) is a time-travel novel based on the premises of colonial exploitation of parallel worlds developed by Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner in their short story Mozart in Mirrorshades, first published in Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986).

The plot partly takes place in a 40 A.D. Palestine, and characters include Yeshu and one of his apostles, Simon the Zealot. Kessel's descriptions of the Roman world occupied by American time travelers, and the attempts of the locals to deal with it through adaptation or resistance (including terrorism) are insightful and entertaining, because the characters are modeled according to the latest scientific notions of the life at the time.

New sci-fi story by Damien Krsteski

2010-07-12T23:24:00.004+01:00

Damien Krsteski, musician and science aficionado from Macedonia, published his short story "Not in a Million Years" on his blog under CC-BY-NC-ND license.

Initially, the story was supposed to go alongside the new Machinesaw album. However, the album left on its own.

(info via Crapwerk, via Ping.mk)

Dune: Did Frank Herbert grok Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian?

2010-02-28T14:13:00.015+01:00

The following excerpt from the first Dune novel (pg. 309) has certainly raised eyebrows of readers of the English version who are also fluent in any south Slavic language.

Deep within the cave, someone began chanting:
"Ima trava okolo!
I korenja okolo!"

Jessica translated silently: These are ashes! And these are roots!"
The funeral ceremony for Jamis was beginning.

The Fremen chant is in Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian. These closely related languages have their differences, which would not affect the above text - it would be the same in an any of them.

At first glance, the translation is deeply flawed, as the word "trava" in this form refers to grasses or herbs, while the form for ashes in the above languages would be "pepela" (from the infinitive "pepeo"). There are few solutions to this puzzle.

1. Lady Jessica made an error

Taking the contemporary meaning of the chant in Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian, Lady Jessica should have translated the chant with:

There are grasses/herbs around! And [some] roots around [too]!

This "mistake" is of no consequence later in the book, there are no incidents involving error of translation between Jessica or Paul on one hand, and the Fremen on the other.

As a device to show Jessica as capable of error ("only human" in the contemporary meaning*) it would be lost to the wast majority of readers who lack familiarity with Balkans linguistics. Therefore, we have to consider the next possibility:

2. Frank Herbert made an error

Another option is that the writer, Frank Herbert, intended the translation as "original," the "true" meaning conveyed by Jessica intended to be understood by English-language speakers, and then precluded it with a foreign-language translation to make it more exotic. In that case, he should have put the Fremen chant as

"Ima pepela okolo!
I korenja okolo!"

However, there's also a third option that would put at ease the mind of Dune fans, some of whom consider Herbert infallible.

3. Nobody's fault

No mistakes were made: Herbert grokked his Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Jessica's Fremen was impeccable. However, considering that the action takes place in the year of 10,191 ~~A.D.~~ A.G. (~ 21,264 A.D. - thanks SandChigger), it would be wise to suggest that the languages changed in the meantime, especially through mixing and matching of populations and cultural influences across various planets.

It is well-known fact that the meaning of some English words has changed in little over 400 years, from the time of Shakespeare or the King James Bible. For instance, the werb "to let" meant "to hinder", "awful" meant "deserving of awe," and "notorious" meant "famous". Or consider that in contemporary mainstream slang a person can at the same time be considered cool and hot.

* No pun intended, but the word human in the Dune novels is used to designate those with elite capabilities from the rabble, as in the "humanity test" involving the Gom Jabar.

Star Wars Purge: Seconds to Die – Comics Review

2009-11-22T21:32:00.010+01:00

Star Wars: Purge - Seconds To Die One-Shot
by Ostrander, Hall, Lei/McKenna
Dark Horse Comics (November, 2009)

This slim (22 pages) volume based on the script by John Ostrander attempts to provide a somewhat novel perspective of the events from Revenge of the Sith as part of the relentless effort of the Star Wars franchise to presents a coherent narrative for adults while remaining within the limits of an overblown children story.

It looks like one of the main purposes of Seconds to Die is to remind the readers of the iconic portrait of hooded-gorgeous-Anakin-gone-bad from Episode III, which appears at least three times.

The yarn about Sha Koon, the last Jedi that survived the onslaught at the end of Clone Wars and then decided to incite a suicidal duel with Vader would have been interesting if her femininity was not totally inconsequential. She’s depicted as a member of species with a head akin to the Predator (without the cool gear), and her body most resembles a very tall human male. The application of gender mainstreaming in this case means blotting out any gender specifics. This comes as no surprise, as lack of sex has been the staple of the franchise since the Phantom Menace (i.e. the removal of the dynamics between Harrison Ford's Han Solo and Carrie Fisher's Leia).

The final battle is quite lame. The Cthons, “primitive” people who help Sha Koon against Vader have “some useful bits of technology” like an “electroshock net.” However, they first attack the lightsaber-armed Sith lord naked and weaponless, and he cuts them to shreds. The utter absence of projectile weapons, especially firearms, within the Star Wars universe has always seem perplexing, and can only be explained by the notion that these stories remain within the framework of fairy tales for kids that need not develop critical thinking skills.

At the end, the conclusion raises this comics to a new level of lameness. The stabbed Sha Koon has a two-page “flashback”—a vision—with a short recap of the adventures of Luke Skywalker, including the death of the Emperor, and dies “at peace.”

This “comforting” epilogue brings to mind the lucid analysis by David Brin in his legendary essay "Star Wars" despots vs. "Star Trek" populists, objecting to absolving Vader from guilt of destroying billions lives during his career because he showed repentance by not killing his own son.

Fortunately, Seconds to Die is just a one-shot. Even though the technical execution of the script and the drawings by Jim Hall (pencil), Alex Lei, Mark McKenna (ink), and Ronda Pattison (color) is of quite high quality, one can only go so far chewing the cud instead of injecting some logic, or creativity into the stale blood of Star Wars.

Ruslana’s Science-Fiction Escapade

2009-10-30T16:27:00.009+01:00

Ukrainian music star Ruslana gained international fame using Hutzul folklore mixed with barbarian style reminiscent of sword and sorcery subgenre in her Wild Dances project, a strategic approach crowned by winning Eurovision song contest in 2004. Her following album Wild Energy(2007) showed a move towards science fiction.

For instance, the Wild Energy video allegedly was based on the book Wild Energy.Lana by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko. Its current Wikipedia article presents the plot involving a person who works as "a pixel" in huge public entertainment shows, reminiscent of immense choreographed performances in North Korea or China, even though the same style of acts has been used in the West since at least the Olympics in Los Angeles.

The environment in the video shows clear influences of The Matrix, with high quality special effects and perfectly executed costumes and choreography. The video mainly deals with an escape sequence from futuristic agoraphobic architectural structures, similar to depiction of Neo's rescue in the first part of the trilogy.

The book's plot also seems to reflect the main motive of the Matrix: protagonist exploring the artificial reality imposed on the system and finding the truth about the inner workings of the economy, and constrains placed on the members of the society.

These values are present in the second video from the same album, The Moon of Dreams, with a storyline that returns towards general fantasy. The video uses natural phenomena on an epic scale as metaphor for the emotions of the protagonists, including climate changes and turning two dead moons into glowing stars.

The costumes seem to build upon some of the motives from Wild Energy, like the bat-people who do not personify evil per se. The video presents a long-distance conversation with the American singer T-Pain, who seems to play the role of benevolent spirit/remote conscience, and does not actively participate in the love life of the main protagonists, played by enchanting Ruslana and her dashing blond counterpart. The long-distance effect is stronger in the Ukrainian version of the song as each singer using her and his mother language.

The League of Un-Copyrighted Gentry

2009-10-08T23:01:00.003+01:00

I just enjoyed watching The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (includes a woman), a comics-based tale of adventure and action, whose wonderfully rendered computer effects often have visual sensibility reminiscent of the best days of ID Software.

The movie is worth watching, in spite of heavy propagandistic shading & displayed misogyny. The story revolves around a group of 1899 ragtag characters who attempt to stop some arms merchants from 'promoting increased return of investment' by starting a world war. So far, progressive enough.

Sadly, the movie also glorifies imperialism, both British and American (its 'heir'), endorsing the idea that even though an individual person might not like an empire (disenchantment allowed for family reasons) s/he has to support it, since the interest of the (current) world empire coincides with the best interests of humanity and world peace. The movie portrays colonialism as benevolent and protective, especially in Africa (!); totally ignores the contemporary Balkan situation; and avoids considering the fact that, just as Washington warned, empire/alliance-building was the primal reason for the World War I.

Of course, the really extraordinary feature of this movie is that all characters come from works of art & entertainment with expired copyright, and are now in public domain. In order to fully understand the significance of this fact, here's a short excerpt from the site of the U.S. Copyright Office, from the document "Copyright Basics":

A work that is created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life plus an additional 70 years after the author's death. In the case of "a joint work prepared by two or more authors who did not work for hire," the term lasts for 70 years after the last surviving author's death. For works made for hire, and for anonymous and pseudonymous works (unless the author's identity is revealed in Copyright Office records), the duration of copyright will be 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.

Similar conditions refer to works created before the stated date. In short: the copyright (the privilege to prevent free use of certain product) may be extended up to 70 years after the death of the individual author, or up to 95 years since the publication if the copyright holder is a corporation.

This cute and fun movie would have been much poorer without the ability to re-use the characters and plot ideas ("raw materials"). League's success provides excellent proof for the need to revise the current, oppressive, legislature on intellectual property.

The movie also has educational value, providing a cross-section of some of the most important early Science Fiction & Fantasy works. Here's a handy list of (some of) the characters and authors featured in the League:

Allan Quatermain, from the King Solomon's Mines (1885), by Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925)
Tom Sawyer, of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), by Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Rodney Skinner, based on The Invisible Man (1897), by Herbert George Wells (1866-1946)
The antihero of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), with references to The Murders in the Rue Morge (1841), by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870), by Jules Verne (1828–1905). Quatermain also mentions Mr. Fog, the hero of Verne's Around the World in 80 Days (1873). Nemo's second in command is Ishmael of Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1819-1891).
Dorian Gray, from The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Mina Harker, from Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker (1847-1912)
Moriarty, the arch-villain of the Sherlock Holmes novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)

In addition, an inquisitive question from Deckard:

Do the authors of the movie have the copyright on their new universe? Do I have the right to use the same characters and write a sequel of the movie?

[Originally published on Razvigor blog, September 9, 2003.]

Young Einstein - a reminder for steampunk lovers

2009-09-06T22:20:00.005+01:00

It does not generally gets on lists of steampunk movies. However, Young Einstein (1988) can be rightfully considered a great genre movie, as it provides a hilarious alternative history of the Fin de siècle science and its top personalities.

You don't need to be well-versed in physics to enjoy this masterpiece by the Australian artist Yahoo Serious, but this comedy will provide much added value if you are.

First "Laptop" Discovered in Flash Gordon Comics

2009-08-31T12:39:00.017+01:00

Probably the earliest depiction of a communication device resembling a laptop has been discovered in an ancient Flash Gordon comics by Mende Petreski of Prilep, Macedonia.

Browsing through his comics collection, Mr. Petreski stumbled upon a panel in Politikin Zabavnik weekly published June 14, 1974, featuring the forces of Ming the Merciless using a device which looks a lot like a laptop to talk to their leader.

Translation: "Our infantry will stay in the cover until the rockets silence the rebel armored cars, commander" - "Keep us posted about the flow of the operation, Major!"

This particular comics represents a Serbian translation of an episode drawn around 1937 by Alex Raymond. The title the magazine used is "Ming's Prisoners", while the contents probably covers part of the story "The Outlaws of Mongo" which the Flash Gordon Wiki attributes to Alex Raymond and Don Moore, originally published as Sunday comics from August 15, 1937 – June 5, 1938.

The Wiki mentions the spacephone as a "communication device used on Mongo," but makes no mention about the laptop-like apparatus.

The leading Macedonian portal On.net broke the news of this discovery first. It can be of interest to computer science historians and comics lovers.

Since 2004, Checker Book Publishing Group has been republishing the Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon comics in hardcopy edition (seven books in total).

Flash Gordon comics were a major hit in Former Yugoslavia, published by popular magazines such as Politikin Zabavnik and Stripoteka. While the former had a tradition of republishing both classic episodes and reruns, the later usually featured newer installments by Dan Barry.

Several scans from this historic episode are available bellow, courtesy of Mr. Mende Petreski.

Zoran Živković on utopian motives in "Childhood's End"

2009-07-28T20:55:00.004+01:00

Zoran Živković has provided enormous positive influence on the development of science fiction in the lands which comprised the former Yugoslav federation.

As a publisher and translator from English to Serbian, he provided access to cutting the edge of contemporary sci-fi literature in the eighties and the early nineties, and as theoretician and screenwriter (Zvezdani ekran, 1984) he also used TV to provide great introduction to sci-fi cinematography.

An example of his work is the essay Utopia in Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, written in 1975 and republished in English in 2001.

Definition of reality by Philip K. Dick

2009-06-14T10:50:00.003+01:00

In the speech "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" attributed to Phillip K. Dick (1978), he explains the motives that drove him to write, and a number of always current affairs:

It was always my hope, in writing novels and stories which asked the question "What is reality?", to someday get an answer. This was the hope of most of my readers, too. Years passed. I wrote over thirty novels and over a hundred stories, and still I could not figure out what was real. One day a girl college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for her philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." That's all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven't been able to define reality any more lucidly.

The Andromeda Strain in Macedonian

2009-02-22T19:09:00.006+01:00

The previous post referring to Michael Chrichton's The Andromeda Strain prompted me to look up the ways this title has been translated by the Macedonian media. I reviewed several articles about Crichton, which appeared upon his recent and untimely death.

The novel has not been translated into Macedonian yet, and the translators who had no official yardstick to compare circled through various meanings of the English word "strain," failing to use the right one.

The word "soj" in Macedonian designates a breed, or lineage (of microorganisms). Thus, the proper Macedonian translation should be "Sojot Andromeda" (Сојот Андромеда). The book has actually been translated in Serbian several decades ago, as "Andromedin soj". The two South Slavic languages have the same word for this term, and Macedonia and Serbia were constituent parts of the Yugoslav federation then, making this issue accessible to Macedonian sci-fi fans at the time. But current translators display quite low level of general education, and probably have little experience with science fiction. Thus the translators from the Macedonian media translated "Andromeda Strain" as:

Andromeda's Thread (Vest daily - „Нишката на Андромеда“)
Andromeda Chain (TV M - „Ланецот Андромеда“)
Andromeda's Pressure (Nova Makedonija daily - „Притисокот на Андромеда“)
while the translators from Utrinski vesnik daily, and the Macedonian Science Fiction Portal "solved" the dilema by putting simply "Andromeda" as title of the book.

Fireballs, Satellites and Andromeda Strain

2009-02-21T10:38:00.004+01:00

It turned out that the recent fireball that streaked across the Texas sky wasn’t debris from the satellite crash over Siberia, but a meteor.

In context, I recommend (re)reading The Andromeda Strain, a great novel by Michael Chrichton. The plot is about a cornered group of people trying to confront the danger due to a satellite crash. It's very quick read, fast-paced and up to the point.

A seasoned sci-fi fan can also view it as prototypical piece of work that influenced numerous copycats, to the degree of turning into cliché. The recently deceased Chrichton should be credited more often as a major influence on popular culture in general. Bellow: trailer for the 2008 TV-series based on the book.

The book was published in 1969 and it's also interesting to compare the visions and interpretations of some then-futuristic information and communication technologies, which are commonplace today, such as automatic biometric identification, voice recognition, and instant communication.

Classic Technophobic SF Movies

2007-03-22T15:55:00.001+01:00

Terminator (1984) film poster

Art reflects, but also incites and strengthens social stances. Release of a number of especially popular technophobic movies followed the increased use of personal computers and computer games by the end of 20th century. In all of them, the technologies have some hidden or open fault, leading to danger and dehumanization. The sole exception is the firearms technology, which always functions flawlessly, while the displayed violence subliminally provides additional fodder to the feeling of fear.

Alien (1979, 1986, 1992) – developing various high technologies for space exploration will only enable some ugly monsters to devour us.

Mad Max (1979, 1981, 1985) – the future brings social decay, violence and nuclear holocaust, with a passion.

Blade Runner (1982) – extremely capable, humanoid robots turn into murderers when something irks them, like—for instance—their limited lifespan.

WarGames (1983) - teenagers + computers = end of civilization as we know it.

The Terminator (1984, 1991, 2003) – the computers are evil, robots are ruthless unstoppable killers, nuclear technology is disastrous. Run! Run!

Electric Dreams (1984) – home PC adopts demon-like role, trying to dominate the life of its owner.

RoboCop (1987) – even the most humane man can be turned into a machine. There's no turning back afterwards.

Akira (1988) – Mad Max on steroids, with added teenage angst.

The Lawnmover Man (1992) – using virtual reality leads to insanity and horror.

StarTrek: First Contact (1996) – members of the Borg civilization got too cozy with their computers. Now they want to make us do the same, or destroy us, whatever comes first.

The Matrix (1999, 2003) – the computers would not only enslave us and exploit us, they will also fix us in a way that the majority will be fine with it. Only God can save us.

The 6th Day (2000) – like in most science fiction movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, our future is bleak. This time, the guilty party is genetics.

I, Robot (2004) – technophobic antithesis of Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics (the title is the same as his most famous short story), as opposed to the Bicentennial Man (1999) which follows the original plot of a humanizing robot who fights for his human rights.

The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb

2007-01-07T13:52:00.000+01:00

Philip K. Dick Fans website presents a Robert Crumb comics about Philip Dick's "Valis" experience, first published in Weirdo comic #17 from summer, 1986.

It is an interesting graphic interpretation of a series of events which happened to Dick in March of 1974. He spent the remaining years of his life trying to figure out what happened in those fateful months.
You will find all 8 pages of this story here. The file sizes are rather large (120-140K each) so that the text was readable and the detail visible.

Quake: Polygons, Monsters, and Censorship

2006-12-30T11:49:00.000+01:00

The Beer Garden features a sordid tale about Quake I, II and III, including:

Bizarre product tie-ins: for the release of the movie "Anaconda" Sony pictures released through their website an add-on level for Quake titled "Temple of the Mist" were you made your way trough an ancient temple searching for the altar that holds the key to escape. Obviously, before escaping you have to go mano a mano with the Anaconda itself...weird uh?
The original Quake was supposed to have a medieval environment, but a few months before its release, most of the medieval-role playing aspects of the game were removed (i.e. one of the weapons was going to be a sword and there was a dragon to fight with) and the result was a game with guns but such enemies like the fiend or the death knight (these were included in the original project).

Marcell Mars on Sci-Fi

2006-12-24T17:51:00.000+01:00

Marcell Mars, net.guru of Multimedia Institute (net.culture club mama) and Creative Commons Croatia fame, talks about the influence of Science Fiction on free culture in an exclusive statement for Science Fiction Observer.