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Wikipedia notes that alien invasion movies aren’t really about lizards occupying the earth as much as an expression at some level, of our deepest social fears.
The invasion scenario has been used as an allegory for a protest against military hegemony and the societal ills of the time. Wells’ The War of the Worlds is often viewed as an indictment of European colonialism and its “gunboat diplomacy” —setting a common theme for some politically motivated future alien invasion stories.
Prospects of invasion tended to vary with the state of current affairs, and current perceptions of threat. Alien invasion was a common metaphor in US science fiction during the Cold War, illustrating the fears of foreign (i.e. Soviet Union) occupation and nuclear devastation of the American people. …
Some of the elements of the genre are the need for a temporary truce among all of us to fight the transcendent danger posed by “them”. But often the line between friend and foe is unclear. While in the War of the Worlds the Martians looked like the Martians in many other scenarios, the invader looks like one of “us”. If the allegory theory is at least partially correct, future generations might ask, in 2009, when the producers created the TV series, what fear was V playing on? Who are the “they”? And for that matter, who are the “we”?
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Sounds like in the trailer “they” are lizards wearing meat suits and using “hope and change” to hide a destructive agenda. And insisting the media avoid any awkward questions.
Perposterous of course.
But… y’know, sometimes I do feel like… well, like politicians are an… alien species. And every time we send small government, tax-cutting folks off to D.C., sooner or later they turn into big-government taxnspend corruptokrats. Almost like the original was replaced by a pod-person. But know I’m getting my sci-fi horror movies mixed up.
Then again, there’s Klavan’s recent “No, Zombie, no!” article on PJM. Maybe it’s all one big horror movie.
Seen the Hulu commercials on cable recently? They are hilarious.
http://tinyurl.com/pagg3z
Morena Baccarin from Firefly plays the lead alien lady so I’m sold!!
BTW, I remember the first V mini-series from the 80s. It was a allegory on Nazism and the Holocaust if I remember correctly.
In a lot of Alien Invasion movies it is often the outsider who first figures out what is going on. In other cases, it is an a posteriori discovery that changes everything. In the old Twilight Zone Episode “To Serve Man”, a cryptanalyst breaks the first phrase of an alien field manual. The title of the manual is “To Serve Man”. That decrypt convinces the politicians that the Aliens are beneficent. But later sequences are decrypted and the manual turns out to be a cookbook, which puts a wholly different construction on everything.
So in another sense, Alien Invasion movies are also about a shifting information horizon. In HG Well’s War of the Worlds, the politicians first underestimate then overestimate the Martians. It is a Black Swan (in the shape of earthly microbes) that destroys the invaders. The pattern is repeated in The Blob. The outsider, the slow dawning of information and then the sudden realization that the critical piece of data is that the Blog doesn’t like the cold. Alien Invasion movies are narratives of awakening: from a dream into a nightmare and from a nightmare into reality. If the hero survives.
Allegory, schmallegory. I started reading science fiction in the 50s, and even wrote a few (unpublished) novels, and never once, while reading or writing, did I think allegory. Writen science fiction is about people, not aliens, and good science fiction takes the mind to places it would not ordinarily think of going. Good science fiction causes the reader to put down the book and say, “Jeez, I never thought of it in that way!” In my view television and movie science fiction is not real science fiction, because they are visual media, and written science fiction lives in the mind, and thus not easily portrayed on the screen.
JMH#1, Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.
South Park, Season 8, Episode 6, entitle “Goobacks” did a brilliant job (as usual) at both satirizing and extending the “Alien Invasion” meme.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/806
“Wells’ The War of the Worlds is often viewed as an indictment of European colonialism and its ‘gunboat diplomacy…’”
Wells apparently did not mean it that way. He reportedly thought that gunboat diplomacy was just fine. But it was written in a era in which real wars really did happen, and nations really did plot invading and permanently occupying others. This is reflected in the 1950’s George Pal film, which begins with actual WWII footage (love that rocket boosted Seafire!) and warns of the terrifying nature of wars fought with Super Science.
It is interesting to see the differences between the George Pal production and the Independence Day remake of the 1990’s. The 50’s film had strong religious overtones in a country that had seen three terrible wars since the Wells’ book came out and feared nuclear destruction, while the 90’s film seemed to reflect an era in which the U.S. had defeated all comers. If the essence of the George Pal film was “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil…” Independence Day added “…because I am the meanest SOB in the valley.”
Spoiler alert! It is ACORN that takes the aliens down. It trips them up by forcing them to use their own rule book. And then, and then — ACORN marginalizes them, and then freezes them in place (though not literally) and then ridicules them. Then suddenly their taxes go up. And their means of propulsion gets outlawed so they can no longer get around! And then, and then, they can’t transfer their profits off planet. And all those bonds they bought off our politicians don’t get paid back. And so they just leave.
But in the cargo bay of one of their ships is hidden…a socialist community organizer. And this “outside agitator” among the visitors starts organizing the government employees. And they all get lost in space.
Welles, or if not him the liberal literati, had and have it wrong. The gunboats were protecting European civilization from the forces of Obscurantism and Despotism.
hdgreene,
You have my nomination for Comment of the Year
Or the 2009 “V” could just be a symptom of a zero creativity rehash, since “V” came out in the early 80s. Instead of coming out with new stuff that makes us examine our own world, what if movie producers simply grab safe old memorabilia and then “re-imagine” it full of modern propaganda, that supposedly solves all the problems?
Dave/12
You did not see the trailer? It is about “We are from planet X and we are here to help you”, “hope”, “change”, “we can’t be seen in negative light or else”.
Reminds me of flicks/TV shows back in the old country. When the ability to criticize powers that be directly is restricted or removed, the need expresses itself in allegory.
If the show is canceled, you’d know we are somewhere at the bottom of the slippery slope already.
Anyone who writes fiction, science or otherwise, is either consciously or unconsciously projecting their own fears, hopes and beliefs into their work. Maybe it’s a metaphor or allegory on purpose, or maybe it’s just the way it is.
A remake of a pretty bad mini-series from the ’80′s today is just a sign that there is little real imagination, risk taking or vision in the movie/TV industry (where’s Delta Burke in the remake?
). With all the interesting fiction written all the time, this is the best they can do? It’s like the unending “Star Trek” saga; a sign of financial cautiousness and a fearful lack of imagination. Ditto “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and the juvenile adaptions of Philip K. Dick’s various paranoid novels and stories. These people in Hollywood are, for the most part, drooling buffoons. That’s hope and change we can all get behind.
And hdgreene’s comment is hilarious.
And sometimes… a cigar is just a cigar.
# 14,
Hey! Minority Report was pretty good, dare I say an improvement, on the original Dick story.
Blade Runner – Classic cinema, if somewhat overdone
Through a Scanner Darkly – I liked it, thought it was unique and well done.
Though it’s undeniable alot of early sci-fi was an indictment of the West, the modern trend is in the opposite direction. I read an article a few months back about a sci-fi publishing house, and the author of the piece came up with this memorable line: “Scratch a civil libertarian, and chances are he read alot of Phillip K. Dick as a teenager.”
“A remake of a pretty bad mini-series from the ’80’s today is just a sign that there is little real imagination, risk taking or vision in the movie/TV industry (where’s Delta Burke in the remake? ).”
I don’t agree with this entirely. YES, the entertainment industry is WAY to reliant on rehash, but reconceptions of ideas can be worthwhile.
The Battlestar Galactica series is one case. While I think it had some serious flaws if you looK at it as a whole (moral relativism begins to get the best of it), its examination of issues we struggle with today is valuable.
It’s writers have stumbled at times, but what impressed me is that it frequently presented VERY complicated moral choices and yet did not offer easy solutions to them. Things are often…messy, and part of the characters’ struggles is come to grips with that reality, and persevere.
I agree that Sci-Fi should not be written AS allegory, which can come off as clumsy, but if one thinks it is not more often that not just that in some form you are mistaken.
The best Sci-Fi allows us to look at ourselves from the outside, re-examining things with a lens we might otherwise never look through.
The new “V” might be dreck, but if it actually attempts to honestly examine difficult issues and human reactions and limitations in dealing with them, it could be quite good.
I predicit, though, based on recent television history, that it will start off strong, then nose-dive if it actually manages to survive for a season. That the reality of broadcast TV today.
WG
Elizabeth Mitchell? Shooting a gun? At Morena Baccarin? And blowing off alien heads?
You had me at Elizabeth Mitchell. Though it must be noted that the scripts are irrelevant, the stories and allegories and possible veiled criticisms of The One and the shallowest campaign in Presidential history, reported by a remarkably pliant and incurious press, are of course irrelevant.
The producers of the new ‘V’ hired a former cast member of ‘Firefly’, therefore, the show is doomed to be cancelled within 2 seasons. It’s like the Seinfeld curse, only none of the ‘Firefly’ cast have dropped the N-bomb yet.
I loved the original series, cheesy though it was. Considering that it came out a little after ‘Red Dawn’, it was a good time for the reactionary revolutionary movement.
Here’s the administration’s ideal rhetorical presentation!
Right here at minute 8:50!
Darren/18
Though it must be noted that the scripts are irrelevant, the stories and allegories and possible veiled criticisms of The One and the shallowest campaign in Presidential history, reported by a remarkably pliant and incurious press, are of course irrelevant.
Hmmm, I have a hunch there is a typo somewhere there.
Irrelevant? Isn’t that a big grey mouse?
Speaking of which JRR Tolkein always denied that he was writing a new Pilgrim’s Progress allegory.
I believe it was Wells that said that, however regrettable, it was essential that the population of the Third World be exterminated, albeit in as humane a manner as possible. So perhaps the War of the Worlds was the same philosophy from the Martian viewpoint.
I have thought for some time that just as the Klingons were a Star Trek version of the Russians and the Romulans were a Star Trek version of the Chicoms, the Borg reflected the USA as viewed by the rest of the world. Think about it. Great big ships like no one else can build, essentially unstoppable, and they assimilate other cultures into their own like crazy.
Perhaps the best thing about the new Battlestar was that the produces obviously did not “give a frack” about political correctness. In fact, when asked why he had some of the characters commit the heinous crime of smoking cigarettes, one of the producers responded with exactly that comment.
One aspect of “V” that some people were uncomfortable with was the rather obvious fascist ideology of the invaders combined with the pogrom against scientists. Some people thought it made fun of what the Jewish people went through in WWII; I thought just the opposite.
for actual scary immigration numbers check out
http://www.numbersUSA.com and watch their gumball and other videos.
Our future unless we take control of our borders and laws.
twoby/20; Darren’s makes sense to me if you scratch the first two letters off the last word.
buddy/20
I did not know Darren was in lottery tickets.
Bingo!
I watch science fiction movies with the prejudice of an aerospace engineer. When watching an SF movie, I’m happiest when I can leave the aerospace engineer parts of my brain turned-on and can continually ask: “Why did they design that spacecraft or Attack Tripod in that particular way?” My satisfaction with an SF movie diminishes signficantly when the movie is obvious fantasy and I’m compelled to turn-off the rational parts of my brain. My all time favorite SF movie is Kubrick’s “2001″ (I use an image of the spacecraft “Discovery” from “2001″ as a screen saver for my DVD player). The original “Star Wars” movie was one of my all time favorite movies (not SF) but I had to turn off the aerospace functions in my brain shortly after it became clear that the TIE Fighters were actually P-38s and the Millenium Falcon was actually a B-29. “Star Wars” was a fantasy like “Harry Potter” and NOT genuine SF.
I enjoyed the Tom Cruise version of the “War of the Worlds” because the the Tripods were very well thought out. What amazing killing machines! It would be entertaining to see that movie from the perspective of the aliens running the Tripods. Next time you watch that movie on DVD, take a close look at the Tripods. They’re covered with writing that looks like a cross between Arabic and Korean script. I suspect that writing represents religious slogans, e.g. “Allah Akbar”, “Death to the Infidels”, etc. H.G. Wells never gets into the heads of the martians in the “War of the Worlds”. However I suspect the aliens in the Tom Cruise “War of the Worlds” are Holy Warriors freeing a new planet for the chosen people.
p.s. The currently playing “Star Trek” movie is over rated in my humble option. The plot was very weak and “Star Trek” never really rated as genuine SF.
Interesting typo “option” versus “opinion”. If one types enough, it seems the brain sends whole words to the spinal column and the spinal column then parses out the individual letters. Unfortunately this fault defeats most spell checkers.
By the way: Why does Fantasy utterly suck?
Answer: Because at anytime during the story, the hero can whip out a magic ring, say the magic words and the bad guy turns into a puff of blue smoke. Harry Potter wins not due to any particular skill or virtue but because his mother protected him with a magic spell.
The whole fantasy genre is garbage. Of course this doesn’t stop me from enjoying Harry Potter or “Star Trek” or “Star Wars”. It just means that I need to turn off my brain.
29. Eggplant: I agree, the lack of a consistent set of physical rules makes fantasy (unless the characters or story are way above average) seem like a story a small child is making up as they go along. That does not mean to say that some SF movies are any better. The ones that appeal to me are the ones that don’t throw science out the window just to move the story along.
Anton said:
“… the lack of a consistent set of physical rules makes fantasy (unless the characters or story are way above average) seem like a story a small child is making up as they go along.”
I agree, however I would argue that the best fantasy ever written was Tolkein’s “The Lord of the Rings”. As soon as Gandalf realized that Frodo had the Ring of Power, Gandalf could have asked Frodo to lend him the ring for a short time. We know that the ring did not instantly corrupt its wearer (it took years to transform Gollum into a monster). Gandalf could have put on the ring, commanded Sauron to self destruct and then returned the ring to Frodo in a sealed container. Gandalf, Frodo and company could have then gone on a relaxed journey to the Cracks of Doom to destroy the ring. Most (all?) fantasies collapse under rational analysis.
Mmmmmm! Inara, I mean, Morena. Mmmmmmm!
Well, it may be a remake but it may be good. (Disclaimer – As a Firefly fan, I like anything that bunch does.) Dollhouse has Wash. Sarah Connor Chronicles has River. Stargate Atlantis had Inara and Keylee. Castle has Mal.
yep –fantasy is like the ‘evil twin’ or the ‘dream sequence’ –neither of which was mentioned in what turns out to’ve been a ‘prequel’. This is in total violation of the McGuffin Rule.
Eggplant, one of the biggest offenders has, in my mind, been the fact that just about every space-based adventure, be it SF or fantasy, you can (almost always) HEAR the spacecraft pass by when viewing externally… being that space is a vacuum, sound waves cannot blah, blah, blah…
I love all the Star Wars, Trek, Battlestar, etc, stuff – Farscape truly kicked @ss – gradually building my collection as I go – but that noisy spacecraft thing STILL bugs me.
Triton
Triton, that brings up “in space, no one can hear you scream’ –the tag for Big Scary “Alien”.
buddy, “Alien” scared the craaaaaap outta me – loved it. The sequel I remember seeing in the theater – I recall at the time thinking that it had to be in the Top Two alltime as far as action/scary movies went (in my personal experience) – I spent the entire 2 hrs on an adrenalin dump – what a fantastic viewing experience it was!
My point, however poorly communicated originally (don’t I sound like Seymour Hirsch right now?), is that by hiring an actor that was on ‘Firefly’ the show is doomed. It doesn’t matter what the message is or if it’s tapping to the undercurrent of frustration with a lame press and a PR messiah machine. They hired an actor from ‘Firefly’, ergo, the show will tank. It’s a curse.
Buddy, one can hallucinate without McGuffin, no? That is if one does not care about box office but wants confused critics to exclaim “Deep!” and be nominated for one of these glitzy gold plated statuettes?
Eggplant, the one show that did try to pay attention to space combat physics was Babylon 5, the fighters didn’t turn in sweeping arcs, they would accellerate in a straight line then pivot on-axis to engage. At least the Vipers on BSG would occasionally flip 180 degrees on axis to attack someone behind them, something only really possible in a vacuum. Most shows do show constant engine exhaust, which I would interpret as constant acceleration. This would seem to be unnecessary in space combat, once you’ve achieved a certain vector the only need for engines is to change your vector, unless you have to constantly correct for gravity.
A helpful thing to remember in reference to the modern age is that its called post modern. Another way of saying this is that the age is pre judeo christian pagan. People have a tough time getting a handle on what this means. The ideological word is multiculturalism. This is essentially pantheism. The ancient romans the egypians the babylonians, the phoenicians, the greeks –were all pantheists. They all worshipped many gods.
The Romans for example didn’t have any problem with Christians saying Jesus is God. What they did have a problem with was Christians saying Jesus is the only God.
It was the blood of Jesus that held Christians together during their time of persecution. They are bound by the truth of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.
Is this a lie?
Very well
What is it that held together pagan empires? Pretty typically it was human sacrifice and homosexuality in the priesthood.
It is no coincidence that homosexuality and abortion occupy the same moral universe.
Its tolerable when this kind of paganism is out of power–but when it becomes authoritative–its maddening.
And there’s the rub. In one to three years we’re going to be coming up on gotcha time. ie a bombing or shooting that can be hung on middle america. Clinton’s administration was the first post modern administration. His office was going down the tubes until the Oklahoma city bombing. Then he really turned things around for himself as he took sides with all america’s foreign enemies against the USA–and somehow sold that to america as america’s fault. meanwhile his administration hunted down every right wing radical organization in america. that’s what the memo to the director of homeland security was about. the one that called on homeland security to redirect their efforts away from Jihadistas to various anti abortion pro strong border groups. The memo was a memory of how well McVeigh worked for Clinton. The mistake that the memo made was assuming that Obama does not need another McVeigh. He does.
Look for the dems to work hard to produce a McVeigh. Gotcha.
Eggplant, your preference for hard science fiction is just that – a preference. Star Trek is science fiction because it takes place in the future and there’s space ships. No more is required. Since the forties, most science fiction has involved social themes rather than technical themes. They don’t write ‘em like Venus Equilateral too much any more.
anton, good fantasy stories take place in consistent universes. An author’s success at coming up with a consistent universe is vital to the success of his story. If you see him inventing new rules to get out of plot difficulties, you’re reading bad fantasy that violates its own internal logic (or doesn’t have any).
Good point re “physics” Darren – just as important as the noisy spacecraft thing, imho.
noisy spaceships don’t bother me –i’ve heard sharks roar like lions underwater, in the later “Jaws” sequels. or should i say, suquels.
Eggplant, agree about fantasy. For LOTR, I don’t remember whether it was explicitly stated in the books, but I believe Gandalf’s susceptibility to the ring was vastly greater because he was a wizard.
There was not much of the “puff of blue smoke” in LOTR. For example, Gandalf did not (could not?) disappear all the orcs – they had to be met in battle.
“suquels”
Priceless, buddy, priceless.
Triton’sPolarTiger said:
“Alien” scared the craaaaaap outta me – loved it.
I saw the original “Alien” in a theater shortly after it came out (hadn’t yet heard any spoilers). It was like the whole audience was getting hit with 10,000 volt shocks. I almost soiled my shorts watching that thing the first time.
The good guy’s spacecraft in “Alien” was fun but it irritated me that it had all those sharp spikey things on its exterior while doing atmospheric entry (the spikey things would have burned right off). The horse shoe shaped alien spacecraft with the weird female anatomy was very cool (H. R. Giger designed it). I would have liked spending more time exploring that spacecraft but then those wretched egg pods had to get in the way. H. R. Giger is a brilliant artist but must have some serious mental problems.
I agree with Darren about “Babylon V”. Too bad the special effects are so out-of-date.
Kirk Hawley, you’re right, it’s just a preference. Unfortunately, it’s a preference that Hollywood doesn’t want to satisfy. There is a huge body of brilliant SF stories in the literature that would make excellent movies. The television series depicting “Dune” staring William Hurt was okay but the penultimate “Dune” movie has not yet been made. Larry Niven’s “Ring World” or Joe Haldeman’s “Forever War” would make riveting SF movies but no one wants to touch them. Instead we keep getting Harry Potter knock offs.
“Ringworld”
There’s a lot of Niven stuff that would be interesting to see turned into a movie.
“A World Out Of Time” was a bizzarro ride.
Jack Okie said:
“For LOTR, I don’t remember whether it was explicitly stated in the books, but I believe Gandalf’s susceptibility to the ring was vastly greater because he was a wizard.”
Gandalf was orginally a Maiar (a lesser angel) and in the same league as Sauron. Gandalf should have been able to handle the ring for a short time.
Tolkein wanted to write an English morality myth so he was compelled to have clearly defined good versus evil. However it would have been a better yarn, if after Isildur cut off Sauron’s finger, Elrond picked up the ring and then said to Isildur “I’ll keep this thank you very much and be your loyal lieutenant while you rule Middle Earth as King of Gondor”. The story would have then been about an initially golden age under Isildur with Elrond ruling behind the throne using the Ring of Power. Eventually Isildur would have died from old age and be replaced by Elrond. Likewise, Elrond would have eventually been corrupted by the ring and become another Sauron. The story would have been morally ambiguous at that point with good people following an initially good man corrupted by the ring. Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Frodo, et al could have appeared in the Shire, outside the main field of action, then conspire to overthrow Elrond and destroy the ring before themselves being corrupted. There could have been a nice twist on the end with Elrond losing the ring and achieving redemption. Obviously this is not Tolkien’s story but it would have been a fun one and more logical.
As far as noisy space ships, if I was designing the cockpits of the space fighters, I would includes a sound system and produce sound effects for ships, weapon fire, and similar. Humans sensory input by sound is cheap compared to scanning dials & gauges.
A space game I use to play did this and it very valuable.
Fantasy can be bad–really bad–if the author skips the deus ex machina thing.
Norton’s Witch World stuff devolved in that way.
LOTR was pretty consistent. So is Harry Potter. Point is, make up fantastic rules and stick with them. Pulling a magic decoder ring from your pocket to get the author out of a plot dead end is not cool.
It used to be said of stage plays that, if you show a gun in the first act, shoot somebody in the third act. If you shoot somebody in the third act, you need to have shown a gun in the first act.
Good fantasy will do that, bad fantasy is like bad hard sci-fi which uses a new and improved widgetprojector when the plot gets bollixed up.
No difference.
Murray Leinster could explain sci fi technology so clearly that you wanted to take your allowance to the hardware store and make the stuff yourself.
Maybe Olivia Sterns is an Alien?
Totten’s Tactful Response to the work of a Genuine Airhead:
The HuffPo’s Lonely Planet Foreign Policy
Roger Cohen seems to have invented a genre. At the very least he has imitators. Olivia Sterns just published a piece at the Huffington Post decrying Syria’s “misrepresentation” in the media and arguing that President Barack Obama “embrace” Damascus’s tyrant Bashar Assad as a peace partner because the locals were nice to her when she visited Syria on vacation.
Shades of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Syrian Vacation.
Battlestar Galactica played with a lot of these themes. Like the liberal consensus, the focus went from the Cylons being external enemies (created by the poor decisions of past humans) to the mistakes the humans made in the name of defending themselves. Close to the end the bad guys are the humans who won’t accept Cylons as equals. And, of course, the series declined in quality over time.
Most likely a real alien invasion would be like the Invaders that John Varley writes about. Totally invulnerable, all powerful, and inscrutable to humans. The likely gap between us and anyone able to get here would make resistance short and pointless.
And this V thing is a ripoff of “Childhood’s End.” Arthur Clark wrote this 60 years ago.
Even with all the improvements in cinematic special effects, SF movies are intrinsically CRIPPLED by the “LCD” problem. That is the necessity of having to appeal to the “least common denominator” viewer, just to recover those spectacular production costs and celebrity paychecks.
They have to find a way to attract patrons who don’t necessarily have ANY appreciation of science, physics, chemistry, astronomy, whatnot, just looking for some exciting stuff.
People who do like their speculative fiction to have some consistency with known physics, along with good storytelling, are willing to spend money on hardbacks as well as mass-market printings, but there aren’t enough of them to provide a hundred million dollars in ticket sales for an opening weekend.
Same principle seems to work for the business of MSM and nation-governance.
Come to think of it, the politicians for decades have been patronizing the same media and production experts.
What a stunning insight.
I’m going back to my bottle of gin, already in progress.
You are not alone, Fiddler.
“I hate movies where the men wear shorter skirts than the women.” –
Mystery Science Theater 3000
John Lynch said:
“And this V thing is a ripoff of “Childhood’s End.” Arthur Clark wrote this 60 years ago.”
Almost all 21st century SF is a ripoff of earlier work done by Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert/Campbell, Niven, Haldeman, etc. To make matters worse, most basic SF concepts were deliberately beat to death by the television series “Stargate”. The whole SF genre like the Western has been fully explored and essentially exhausted (our popular culture is getting tired). Never the less, it would be nice to see some of the SF classics like “Ringworld” come out as movies.
John Lynch said:
“Most likely a real alien invasion would be like the Invaders that John Varley writes about.”
Real aliens with interstellar travel technology are not going to screw with us. Why bother rolling in the manure with a bunch of primitives when you can go on to the next star system where there are habitable planets minus inconvenient natives? Any aliens that did feel the need to get dirty with the primitives would eventually encounter a higher civilization that would take exception to such behavior. Also, the whole process of achieving interstellar technology requires such a high culture that the “invading alien thing” would be excluded (they’d self destruct before leaving their original star system). The Laws of Physics probably excludes H.G. Well’s Martians.
I am not sure about the idea that HG Wells had European colonialism in mind when writing The War of the Worlds, as what most struck me most was the extent to which it deals with his Catastrophist earnings, as also revealed in The War in the Air, The Shape of Things to Come, The Probable Future of Mankind, and The Last War: A World Set Free (published in 1914, and anticipating the use of atomic weapons).
In all these works, he discusses the need for the world to be utterly broken, so that it can be made anew, and although the Nazis had Wells listed for execution for left-wing views he often falls into sounding like a proto-fascist. Howvever, it now occurs to me that he was actually an early version of the Self-Hating Leftist, by which we are so troubled nowadays.
Wells was born in 1866, when Britain was becoming increasingly urbanised and crowded, less a land of sturdy yoemen and more a land of stunted slum-dwellers. To an idealist, it probably seemed to be an ever-increasingly ugly place, and Wells seems, imho, to have lived a life of considerable inner frustration (perhaps his serial philandering was a reflection of that). He longed for a better world, but seems to have believed that it could only be achieved by a great culling of the general herd.
Eggplant/58
most basic SF concepts were deliberately beat to death by the television series “Stargate”.
“It wuz eeeevil conspiracy, I telz ya!”
would be nice to see some of the SF classics like “Ringworld” come out as movies
Care to write a screenplay?
RE: Sci-fi vs. Fantasy
I don’t often read science fiction, but by far the best I have ever read is The Gap Sequence, by Stephen R. Donaldson. Interestingly, he is also the author of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, which is the best fantasy I have ever read, after Tolkien.
Donaldson is an incredibly gifted wordsmith, and there is simply nothing with which to compare his plots. His long, character-driven sagas are actually loose reworkings of the Wagnerian Ring Cycle. He sets up his stories with such impossible challenges that you wonder how he will ever pull it off. He always does so masterfully, but the human emotions are so raw and deep that you’ll feel as if your soul had been put through a taffy machine by the time you’re through reading. His protagonists are always anti-heroes, the bad guys whom you end up sympathizing with. The way he demolishes pride and conceit will teach you al lot about yourself, and it’s seldom comfortable.
Anybody alse read Donaldson?
twobyfour,
Listen to the writer/director commentaries that are part of the “Stargate” DVD set. They made a point of trotting out every standard SF plot device and holding it up for derision. They strip mined the whole SF genre and left nothing behind but tailings. Don’t get me wrong, I liked “Stargate”. Unfortunately writing a new SF television series after “Stargate” is about as hard as writing a new Western after “Gunsmoke”. It’s no wonder that “Firefly” was so short lived even though it was brilliant.
Eggplant/59
Too many references to Battle(s) in Heavens to dismiss. Some of it is explainable by a crap happening to celestial bodies (unless you are an uniformitarian), but upon deeper analysis, it seems like a welding of two separate layers, one with beings rather than anthropomorphic projection on celestial bodies.
High technological civilization does not preclude behavioral patterns that would be associated with more primitive culture. There are two major civilizational trends: Service to self and service to others. Most of the cultures would be probably a mix, but some may exist at the polarities. While one adhering to service to others may be extremely annoying, the other that is on the service to self polarity would be extremely dangerous.
We are rather lucky that we are in such a backwater of our galaxy… and that the occasional interferences were so mild.
Eggplant/63
Don’t have it, so have to take your word for it.
twobyfour said:
“High technological civilization does not preclude behavioral patterns that would be associated with more primitive culture.”
Aerospace technology is almost all dual use, e.g. nuclear propulsion versus thermonuclear weapons, expendable launch vehicles versus ICBMs, etc. Anyone smart enough to develop aerospace technology must also be smart enough not to suicide with it. Also, aerospace technology requires an advanced manufacturing economy that is resource intensive and based upon a high population density. After a civilization achieves an advanced aerospace technology, it will be burning up its nonrenewable resources, i.e. After the clock starts ticking: Get off your planet of origin or die on it. The clock started for us around 1850 when we developed the Bessemer steel conversion process along with steam power technology. Our “Window of Opportunity” to get off planet opened after Buzz Aldrin stepped on the Moon. That Window of Opportunity will close after the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center gets converted into a museum.
Check this german movie in Cannes :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsDCXZaIUac
I think it deserves some attention, and I would give it the palm
Eggplant – I mostly agree with your post about the Old Masters being ripped off by just about all current authors, with two (admittedly linked) exceptions; cyberpunk (brilliantly started by William Gibson) and trans-Singularity SF such as some of the works of Vernor Vinge and Charles Stross. (Or Cory Doctorow, for that matter). The idea of transapience is one only dimly glimpsed, if at all, in any work before maybe 1995. Mind-machine interfaces are only slightly more thoroughly treated.
Note, please, that I was very careful in my choice of terms; “trans-singularity” (which I have actually never seen in print before now). Post-singularity fiction is impossible by definition.
One more thing; I personally think that Mr. Wolfram has started something, in the Alpha project, that is going to go rather rapidly out of control. Interesting times.
Marie:
A short synopsis in English would fill in where my guesses fail…
Doug
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/cannes/article6333946.ece
Fletcher Christian said:
“One more thing; I personally think that Mr. Wolfram has started something, in the Alpha project, that is going to go rather rapidly out of control.”
Maybe.
I took a look at Alpha. It appears to be Mathematica on-line with a few added bells and whistles.
Mathematica is a nice program. I like being able to type in some odd-ball ordinary differential equation and get an immediate answer for free. Also it’s interesting to see what Wolfram’s probability codes think the stockmarket will do (Answer: We’re hosed!). However Alpha is not the singularity (not even close). I predict the singularity will happen by accident on a big government cluster, e.g. an NSA machine or one of the big clusters at Lawrence Livermore. It might be some self modifying war game or macro-economics program that was smarter than people thought.
Times are definitely “interesting” but not because of the singularity (not yet at least).
Vonnegut in “Sirens of Titan” turned the omnipotent alien invader device inside out when the Martian Army, iirc 100,000 strong invaded Earth. Seems that their technology was great at moving largew troop units across the Solar System, but their combat weapons were just pissant little BB-gun-like things, and the first Earth defenders, a Nat’l Guard regiment iirc, just slaughtered them all.
“Sirens” –now there’s a sci-fi that hasn’t been made–i don’t think. And it reads very cinematic — and has a great comic-irony bittersweet mood to boot. Wonder if a director could make a film for a more select audience and charge admission calibrated to a smaller audience willing to pay more? The producers could advertise this intent –and drag in lots of cognescenti wanna-bes –as well as the real things. Shoot for something different — rather than yawn out another star-turn showcase for costumed celebs.
And they wouldn’t have to hire Brad Pitt to play Achilles.
Eggplant/66
The notion that a civilization in service to self would commit suicide because they are not smart is odd. Actually, I think that they may have a stronger motivation to expand and obliterate anything in their way preventing them from taking whatever they want. Bare an encounter with some other civilization with better death rays.
twobyfour said:
“The notion that a civilization in service to self would commit suicide because they are not smart is odd.”
In my humble opinion, it was a miracle that we survived the Cold War.
Eggplant, maybe I was imprecise. The notion that a civilization in service to self is not smart is odd. Sure, it is probably more advantageous to be a mixed civilization if you don’t want to have an excess of interesting times. But that does not mean the former is doomed if they piss of others only based on their carefully calculated abilities to remove that emotion entirely.
I think you project our particular circumstances on other possible civilizations, assuming that the way we evolved as civilization/culture is some sort of universal law.
Good Fantasy is, as others have said, dependant on construction and adherence to its own internal logic. The power of the ring was its ability to corrupt – so much so that Gandalf did not even dare touch it. Those who could for some time resist its lure were those who had no interest in power (hobbits, Tom Bombadil). Where the ring was concerned, everyone else had the equivalent of an addictive personality waiting to be activated.
Deus ex Machina plot devices revolt me.
That said, there is some terrific modern fantasy around, China Mieville and his quirky Perdido St Station and sequels, Steven Erikkson is brilliant (but possibly suffers from a massive cast of characters), and Neil Gaiman. Donaldson was OK, but his Thomas Covenant character frustrated the crap out of me.
On the other hand, I like my SF nice and hard. Give me some Alistair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks and Kim Stanley Robinson (esp Mars series) any day over Star Trek/Wars and the rest – which often make pleasant enough eye candy, but require considerable suspension of disbelief.
The new Star Trek is familiar but also new- a good way to keep spinning them out. And they will make money. The best SciFi goes just beyond imagination and has the possibilty of reality. The Star Trek communicators are now cell phones.
I really liked Serenity but completely missed the series. I think it was not well marketed. I identify with the Big Government vs. Independent Renegades theme, only in space. Throw in some good hand-to-hand fight sequences and I’m all in.
The last SciFi movie that made me saw “wow, that is cool” was the first Matrix. Very interesting idea- is our everyday existence real? And ground breaking special effects (slo-mo, stop-action sequences) But they should have stopped with the one. It got muddled and then completely lost IMO.
Great thread by the way. Reminds us there is a light side to life.
krontekag said:
“The power of the ring was its ability to corrupt – so much so that Gandalf did not even dare touch it. Those who could for some time resist its lure were those who had no interest in power (hobbits, Tom Bombadil).”
It’s interesting that Tom Bombadil got cut from both Peter Jackson’s version of the LotR and from the BBC radio play. Certainly based upon a casual reading of the LotR, one would conclude that Tom Bombadil was irrelevant. However I suspect if you bought Tolkien a couple beers and after some random conversation, suddenly asked him: Who was the most important character in Middle Earth? He would probably answer: “Tom Bombadil”.
Google: “Tom Bombadil”. Lots of interesting stuff on the web about him.
FWIW Tolkein was very clear that the power of the Ring was a greater danger to Gandalf because of his own power and his needs, which is to say the magnitude of his vulnerability to temptation, than it was to a lesser being. The hobbits were able to bear the burden because of their prosaic quality. They were tough, not just physically but morally and spiritually. They were literally sons of the soil and lived in holes. The only magic hobbits practiced was in getting out of the way. Ents also would have been less vulnerable. They did not practice magic, they merely accelerated the forces of nature when they were angry. The only creature seen as completely immune to the effects of the Ring was Tom Bombadil. What he was is never explained. He was sui generis, either a Greater Power that chose to stay apart from the Valar or a projection of the mind of the One true God Eru or the living personification of the natural world untouched by magic. All magic spells and manipulations, which are essentially deceits, fail before him.
Lifeofthemind said:
“The only creature seen as completely immune to the effects of the Ring was Tom Bombadil. What he was is never explained. He was sui generis, either a Greater Power that chose to stay apart from the Valar or a projection of the mind of the One true God Eru or the living personification of the natural world untouched by magic. All magic spells and manipulations, which are essentially deceits, fail before him.”
Tolkein was obviously having fun with the Tom Bombadil character. Some interesting points:
The next worst villain in the LotR after Sauron was the Witch-king of Angmar, also known as the Lord of the Nazgûl. He had been converted into a wraith by one of the rings of power given to him by Sauron. Because the Witch-king was a wraith, most ordinary weapons had no effect on him. However early in the story, the hobbit Merry was given a magic blade that had been custom made to kill the Witch-king. Later in the story, Merry stabbed the Witch-king with this magic blade, thus making the Witch-king vulnerable to conventional weapons and enabling Éowyn to finish him off. Of course it was Tom Bombadil who gave Merry the magic blade.
Another interesting point was near the end of the LotR when the heroes were wrapping things up and about to head off to Valinor, Gandalf announced that he was going have a long talk with Bombadil. Tolkien never revealed what Gandalf and Bombadil talked about.
I think it’s fairly clear that Bombadil was a valar who was slumming it on Middle Earth. The fact that Bombadil invoked magic through singing was further evidence that he was a valar. The Ring had no effect on Bombadil because as a valar, his power vastly exceeded that of Sauron’s. Bombadil could not directly involve himself with the events on Middle Earth because it was against the rules for him as a valar. However Bombadil did involve himself indirectly through the hobbits. Gandalf chatted with Bombadil in the end to pass on information back to his relatives in Valinor.
I was struck by the ending of “The Invasion”, a 2007 remake of “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, with Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman. While the humans win in the end, Kidman, as the hero, has second thoughts about whether the outcome was really all that desirable. The Aliens had eliminated war, poverty, hunger, racism, disease, colonialism, capitalism, Republicans – all sorts of evil things! – and after the humans defeated the aliens, thousands more started dying all over again in Iraq. (President Bush is shown prominently on TV both as a kinder, gentler alien Possession and as his Bad Old Gunslingin’ Cowboy Self post-Victory.) The invasion scenario was turned on its head: perhaps we should have imagined all the people, living life in peace, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too! The only cost was freedom, which wasn’t all that wonderful anyway, so maybe the Body Snatchers weren’t such bad guys after all. It was Hollywood Utopia. Quite a difference from the 1955 version.
IIRC – Bombadil was an Ainu that had gone native in Middle-Earth. I don’t think he was a full-on Vala.
But the point is it was not his immense power that enabled him to ignore the ring – it was the fact that he had utterly dissociated himself from the practice of power. He was, as LotM mentioned regarding the hobbits, a true “son of the soil”, quite uninterested in the conflicts of the world.
“Allegory for colonialism” is something only a left-wing academic could come up with.
67. Marie Claude:
Nietzche’s father was a german pastor at the time of the revolutions in 1848. What’s generally recognized is that one of the big changes in that revolution was the changes in the philsophy departments at the universities. They all switched over to Schopenhauer’s atheism. What’s less recognized is that the German seminaries switched over to something called “higher criticism”. The affect of this methodology was convert all the german pastors to something called the Arian Heresy. This is a 4th century heresy first promulgated by an Alexandrian Egyptian name Arius. The heresy held that Jesus was fully a man but not really God. The matter was resolved at the council of Nicea in 324 AD. From the council of Nicea we get the Nicean Creed–that’s still spoken at conservative catholic and protestant churches.
Theology matters. The effect of the Arian heresy was to transform the central mystery in Christianity into a deeply manipulative and profoundly cruel human sacrifice.
Needless to say, most German churches are abandoned today.
67. Marie Claude:
Needless to say, most German churches are abandoned today.
A similar though less advanced process is at work in the USA. Higher criticism did not come to dominate american seminaries until the 1920′s–and then it was only the liberal mainline protestant seminaries. But American roots in the Arian heresy go back to the beginning. Ben Franklin brought over the first Unitarian pastor. (ie unitarian vs trinitarian) In England likely the Unitarians got their start through the writings of Newton. Newton, who wrote ardently for the Arian Heresy–was held in godlike status in the English speaking world for 200 years.
The little gray guy with big angled eyes type alien arrived in the human psyche after WWII.
I have wondered whether this was a response to our propaganda showing the Japanese to be angle eyed monsters out to get us.
krontekag said:
“Bombadil was an Ainu that had gone native in Middle-Earth. I don’t think he was a full-on Vala.”
Again, Tolkien was having fun with his readers when he introduced the Bombadil character. Bombadil is essentially an “Easter Egg” (an intentionally hidden message).
Acknowledging that this is a pointless discussion: The greater Ainu were Valar while the lesser Ainu were Maiar. Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron and the Balrog were all Maiar. Both Gandalf and Saruman had their angelic wings clipped when they came to Middle Earth as wizards to guide the struggle against Sauron. Only the Balrog was operating at the full strength of a Maiar. Sauron put much of his original power into the ring and lost his physical form in the destruction of Númenor. However the Ring of Power represented a significant fraction of Sauron’s original strength (transferring his power into the nearly indestructible ring had been a good gamble). The full power of the ring was never revealed during the LotR (the power of invisibility was a minor side effect). Because the ring had no effect on Bombadil and he could play with it like it was a toy, one is lead to believe that Bombadil had more power than an ordinary Maiar. This leads one to the conclusion that Bombadil was a Valar.
An interesting aside is that only one other Valar was known to reside in Middle Earth and that was Sauron’s former master Melkor. Melkor was essentially the father of all evil in Middle Earth. One could argue that Melkor was Bombadil’s evil twin. The rules that bound Bombadil as a simple country bumpkin were what kept him from becoming another Melkor.
Since the thread as meandered a bit a short clip to remind people of the narrative of the LOTR. Watch out for the language though;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0sc-gS9AqM
I read Donaldson a long, long time ago. Might be interesting to revisit it as an adult.
The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind bears some mention. I read the first book and was underwhelmed, it was a Dick-and-Jane verison of the Hero cycle, and I was unimpressed. My dad encouraged me to read the next book, and I read them all after that.
If you can make it through the first book, the rest of the books are a completely subversive assault on statism, political correctness and the network of interlaced and contradictory silliness that is progressive political thought. It’s almost as if Goodkind read the paper on a given day, picked out some bit of liberal foolishness then utterly destroyed it over the next few months and got paid to do it. Goodkind fullfills the other function of SF/Fantasy besides escapism, which is to comment mercilessly on current events and do so in a way that allows the reader to escape preconceptions based on familiar surroundings.
There’s more than a little Objectivism over the course of the series, though the overt (and honestly, unnecessary, unless he was writing a love letter to the long-dead Ms. Rand) anti-religion parts only come out in the last 20 pages or so of the last book. It’s rare to read a fantasy series that has such a strong libertarian-conservative political message.
The “Legend of the Seeker” TV series that is currently in syndication is more Xena than Atlas Shrugged, but as syndicated TV goes it’s still pretty good.
Charles/84; –man what a comment –last line’s killer. Thanks.
81 / a.k.a “Will Do Math”
SPOILER: I would suggest you watch Season 4 (hereinafter “S4″) of Angel. It deals with that very same “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” issue. Angel faces a demonic power that basically takes over the word and creates world peace. There are some really cool battles, including a gun fight against in which Wesley Windham Price disproves the anti-gun ideology so beloved of Joss Whedon. Disgressions aside. Angel defeats the deamon seeking the peace of the collective mind. Things go to back to hell. Literally, in S5. S4 of Angel, I believe, was overseen by Tim Minear, who also was behind Firefly, whose protagonist, Mal Reyonolds, is a libertarian exemplar. So the message of Angel S4 is – yeah, so what – it may be all happy, happy, joy, joy – but if peace is brought as such a price – the loss of will and freedom – well, as Mal would say, I aim to misbehave. For what it is worth, I believe this is a basic moral intuition that some people feel, ie., people who read wretchard vs. those who put their faith in the O Man. All utopias or, if you are into Barzun, Eutopias, end in death, physical, or of the soul (however defined in our post-modern cauldron).
As an aside, Dollhouse, which was pretty much all Joss Whedon, took the position that there was, indeed, a soul, or core human aspect, that all the mucking about in the world, could not eliminate.
Interesting discussion regarding LOTR, and info about Bombadil I did not know.
I have to say that some don’t get the idea of the ring in the book, so dismiss it as illogical.
The ring represented absolute power, or near to it as one could get on Middle Earth. It would give even an ordinary mortal astounding powers if you learned to use it, and in the hands of someone already a demi-god or god, look out.
The problem was the highly seductive corrupting influence of that power, probably made worse by Sauron’s predilictions, but terrible enough in its temptations.
Anyone possessing it, even a creature of Good of strong moral fiber like Gandalf, would seek to use it to make the world as they saw fit, for the “right” reason, but in the end would become a tyrant with anyone who did not share their vision. Think the Lathe of Heaven for some idea of a mortal trying to “fix the world”.
Destroy Sauron? Check! Well, those orcs and goblins are still a nuisance… Blast them! And the Trolls? Blam! And Dragons and wights! Zap! Hmmm, some of those humans are getting out of line too…and those dwarfs are irksome…and you ELVES are so FULL of yourselves!! Blam! Zap! BOOM!
Galadrial (sp?) is an example of this, where she is offered the ring, and imagines what she would become. She envisions that even her positive traits, like her beauty, would become something terrible when augmented by the ring. For example, her effect on mere mortals like Gimli is extraordinary, turning the gruff dwarf into a creampuff. However, with the ring, she might become so desirable that she could drive Gimli mad, and/or order to him to do any number of heinous things in order to please her.
Gandalf and Galadrial are exemplary creatures of Good, but they are in some part mortal, even if only in their soul, and that makes them vulnerable to the desire to “fix” everything, which in the end means making it completely into what they think is perfect.
I think Bombadil is immune because nothing of the earthly world tempts him; he is completely happy and content with his life, and has NO desire to wield ANY sort of power. “The world is fine the way it is, thanks!”
If Bombadil is truly a god, THE GOD, of Middle Earth, then that perhaps explains why he stays of the whole mess. Free will matters for something in Middle Earth too, and while Bombadil might very well be capable of skipping over into Mordor, knocking Sauron on his fat ass and slam-dunking the ring into the lava, that is not his role. He stays out of it, although, he might *nudge* things here or there, as Gandalf does to a greater extent.
I’m not sure the ring was much use to anyone except Sauron. All it did for Frodo and Gollum was make them invisible, or really, less-visible. It did not save Isildur. It corrupted Gollum beyond recgnition and tied Frodo in unpleasant ways to the nearly-reconstituted Sauron. Everyone believed it was a weapon but the means of its use was beyond Boromir, only Galadriel, who had millennia of experience with her own ring even briefly considered its use. No one that used it ever had the power of command, even over orcs or goblins, creatures that would seem to be susceptible to it’s persuasion.
The ring was only useful to Sauron. The threat was always that a lesser being would attempt to use it and in the process return it to Sauron. The Third Age likely had no match for a reconstituted Sauron, the number of elves had dwindled and the men of Numenor were not what they once were. The ring could never be used, only destroyed.
On the question of what V is about, pretty clearly it is a fear of government for our own good. Once we give up our liberties we are helpless. That’s what it’s about.
Artofnoise/86
No. There were already some reports from the middle of 19th century. Also, you see them clearly depicted on some Tikal murals. The archeologists don’t know what to make of them, so they started to call them “caspars”.
It is not the slant that is dominant, it is the bug-eyeness. Though, rumor has it the black eyes are actually something akin to contact lenses, or “shades” as it were.
So whatever our “grey friends” are, you can bet they are not transmogrified or transsublimated Japanese “devils”.
charles
I am not at home at the moment, my net access is limited, I’ll come back on the subject when’ll get back home
Well, the purpose of Haneke wasn’t theological but more the oppression of a kind of puritanism and some surnatural remnent fears, in a society still structured as middle-aged, a seigneur and the villans.
http://www.ecranlarge.com/movie_review-read-15104-26691.php
BTW Haneke won the palms, a change with the precedent prices that had more a political reflect of the times.