Science Fiction : search and destroy

I love Fassbinder, WoW is good nuff

I wrote about Seconds

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/seconds

i didnt liek the 2nd southern reach book nearly as mcuh as the first

xpost Excellent Morbius coverage of the excellent and scary-ass Seconds.

i really got into the 2nd southern reach book's little details of a crumbling, half-mad bureaucracy, though it was slow at points

i'm not super into ancillary justice. it's now caught up with the "present" and i find it's plateaued a bit. but i'm still reading.

Just watched Seconds and really enjoyed it (apart from the excruciatingly drawn out naked grape party). Particularly liked the Kafkaesque Company halls.

haha yeah Morbz is otm about the pagan wine party fail

I also thought that the crumbling half-mad bureaucracy parts of Authority are really good. The family drama bits (and the associated reveals) though drag it down a bit. First book definitely stronger and I suspect that third will be weakest as I don't think there is a satisfying resolution here. Comparing it in my mind to the similarly structured Fifth Head of Cerberus and this pales.

after loving the first two southern reach books i am finding the third one a real slog

A couple of people have said that... I'm still waiting for my copy.

lots and lots of not-compelling backstory and he's doubled-down on the vagueness.

I quite liked it, but it didn't have the real kick I was hoping for. And the explanation for all the weirdness is given in such an offhand way.

it felt like a prequel... huge letdown and not because it didn't explain enough imho... it just didn't seem have a good reason for existing

Lately I've read Lathe of Heaven -- turned off by the broad characterizations, especially of Lelache -- and After Doomsday -- so expository, and the blatant sexism. What classics are there that have more elegant purpose and characters that aren't flat stereotypes?

Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Earth Abides by George Stewart

Lathe of Heaven is an odd one as it's basically a Philip K Dick pastiche. Not sure you could accuse The Left of Darkness of having broad stereotypes.

NYC MoMA retro "Future Imperfect: The Uncanny in Science Fiction" has some rarely screened stuff, like the Borges-written Invasión:

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/3855?locale=en

looks great, bunch of stuff I've never seen. (also some crap, of course, but what can ye do)

Must say I'm curious about this double feature:

https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/3347?locale=en

me too

Haven't clicked. Is On the Silver Globe in there?

not much in English on Rat Savior, here's some

http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2013/11/Izbavitelj-review.html

http://fredanderson.typepad.com/my-blog/2013/11/the-rat-savior-krsto-papic-1976.html

mercifully no

xp

yeah after googling rat saviour and the damned thing i am pretty sold on that double feature

is colossus: the forbin project rare on a big screen?

p sure it screens in NY now and then, but too cultish to be a perennial

some of the shorts are revelatory; i had no idea there was a Soviet animated film of Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains." Which will be packed, cuz

The Quiet Earth. 1985. Directed by Geoff Murphy
Budet laskovyi dozhd (There Will Come Soft Rains). 1984. Directed by Nozim To’laho’jayev
Monday, August 14, 7:15 p.m.

Presented by astrophysicist
Neil deGrasse Tyson

That soviet bradbury is on youtube.

Not a substitute for the big screen, but for those not in ny.

Invasión is indeed uncanny (the synthetic bird noises!) but it's hardly sci-fi, more like an ultra-abstract political thriller.

Things can be both

It's been a while since I saw that movie but there were no sci-fi elements whatsoever iirc.

Plenty of tango, though, on the soundtrack.

I have just finally read Christopher Priest's Inverted World, discussed at some length earlier in this thread, and I really liked it but I have questions. SPOILERS TO FOLLOW: Can anyone who's read it weigh in on to what degree the physical effects of the "inverted world" described by Hellward (what a name) are "real" and to what degree they're the product of a consciousness warped by the effects of the weird energy field? Because there is some reference to the natives talking about "giants," which would suggest that the energy field has physical effects that are perceptible to people outside it as well as those inside it. But that doesn't quite seem to gibe with the ending, which more or less suggests that the effects are mostly on the perceptions of the people within the city, rather than on the physical world itself. Maybe it doesn't matter because Priest's main points are allegorical, but it did leave me wondering.