The Sci Fi Guy

There’s good science fiction and bad science fiction. But there’s also popcorn munching shoot ‘em ups that were born more from a video game concept than an actual storyline. Guess which column AVP: Requiem (Aliens Versus Predator 2) falls under. Yep - movie derived from the stuff that makes video games so fun to play. Terrible science fiction, but fun stupid entertainment, if you’re in to that kind of thing.

AVP is complete in its simplicity. There’s really no plot. The characters are all fairly archetyped. The monsters are plentiful and eager to go kill each other or humans - it doesn’t seem to make much difference. It’s set in Smalltown, USA. Explosions and blood-sprays are more common than lines of dialogue. So, yes, in summary I liked it.

Here’s the plot synopsis - somewhere, somehow, a Predator (you know, those things Arnie fought a couple decades ago) gets infested with an Alien (you know, those things that Sigourney discovered a couple decades ago) and viola, PredAlien. And that’s where the fun begins, because of course our PredAlien somehow gets dropped on to Earth. [Brief sidenote here - this part of the story didn’t make much sense to me until I popped up to Wikipedia which explains the plot for AVP 2 pretty well (spoiler warning, which really doesn’t matter because that would imply there’s something to spoil…)]. So, low and behold, a small little mountain town in Colorado becomes home to angry, human-lovin’ Aliens. And somehow a Predator finds out about this whole thing and decides to come in to scope things out. And, yes, there are pesky humans that get in the way of both species of super-war-monster and end up being fodder for both sides. It’s a loving, warm, family film.

This could probably not be any more masculine if it tried. The women are uniformly gorgeous, and the men are all pretty uniformly brave and noble. Every flavor of firearm is brought out in this one, including a hand-held version of the famous Predator shoulder-cannon. And of course, the movie ends with an enticing suggestion that we’ll even get a third Aliens versus Predator movie - which will somehow bridge the gap from the AVP’s to the Aliens movie line (which follows the Weyland-Yutani “The Company” stuff that setup all of Ripley’s shenanigans in the Aliens series of movies).

The biggest problem with AVP-Requiem, as far as I’m concerned, is that it’s just too dark. I watched the DVD on a progressive-scan DVD player on a decent LCD TV with the lights off at night-time and could still barely make out some of the action in some scenes. Amp up the contrast a little on the next one, guys! Oh yes, and there’s ample blood, gore, violence, a far-too-brief bikini scene, and plenty of profanity as well. So, all in all, if you’re looking to watch a video-game storyline for a couple hours, AVP-R is ideal.

Looks like another remake of a popular Japanese thriller (a la The Ring and The Grudge). One Missed Call looks like it could be pretty interesting. It’s supposed to come out this January.

Personally, I like these types of thrillers - they’re usually pretty edge-of-the-seat (lets face it, if you’ve seen The Ring I know you jumped out of your chair during that TV scene…), and they also include a science fiction themed thrill.

Well, I’m always interested in finding out more about the people behind the movies that make science fiction come to life, and recently I realized that Christopher Nolan might be a screenwriter & director worth keeping a close eye on.

His work so far is limited, but extraordinarily psychological. His first mainstream success was found in Memento, a dark psych-thriller about a man that can’t form new memories. Visually Memento is a great film to watch, and the character interplay is definitely well written. It’s not scifi, of course, but the premise could fit extremely well in a Phillip K. Dick story as easily as it does this murder / memory thriller. However, since Memento he was also given writing credit for some interesting scifi: Batman Begins and The Prestige. I know what you’re thinking: neither of those count as scifi! Well, I disagree.

Batman, and in fact most comic-book based characters, are heavily rooted in science fiction themes. The alternate world, the unique blending of technology and varying history, as well as characters that are capable of things ordinary humans aren’t. Of course X-Men is far more science fiction than Batman (after all, Batman is just a man), but there’s definitely a scifi tilt to his work. Also, The Prestige, while set 100 years ago, definitely makes the cut as a scifi thriller. I won’t disclose much here, but I do recommend that you take the time to watch it. It’s a great movie, and once finished it leaves you saying, “I gotta see that again!”

Now Mr. Nolan is working on the Batman sequel, The Dark Knight, which I’m certain will be another great adventure for the black bat. I’m looking forward to seeing what he will work on after The Dark Knight, and I’m hoping he’ll continue working on dark psychological films.

As another note, make sure you keep an eye on JJ Abram’s “Cloverfield” project… Here’s a trailer if you didn’t happen to catch it during the Transformers. Rumors are spiraling, as our favorite Lost creator is known to do, and odds are throughout fall there’ll be lots of easter eggs peppered around the web. Who knows if we’ll even get a name for it!

Have a great and safe Labor Day long weekend!

Two of the staples for the last twenty years of cinematic science fiction have been the Aliens’ and the Predators. Then came AVP (Aliens versus Predator, for those not in the “know”), and audiences everywhere walked out of the theater asking themselves, “Did that just happen?”

Well, looks like we’re in for some more dueling monsters, this time in a setting that reminds much more of the original Predator storyline (aka: foolish humans in a forest with guns). Let’s face it, the aliens are the ultimate bad guys, and the Predators … well … let’s hope they at least give us the time of day every once in a while. I’ll be curious how the explain away the ability for the Aliens to basically create thousands of offspring immediately. Christmas is looking good this year!

Warning: This is an R-Rated Trailer, meaning it contains profanity and explicit visual violence.

On a side note: Am I the only one that visually connects the queen and worker Aliens (Ridley Scott style) to the Hive Queen and her workers represented in Ender’s Game (and subsequent novels)? Perhaps it’s just my lack of imagination, but whenever I picture the buggers, I picture something that resembles these creatures.

There’s science fiction and then there’s fiction about science. Artifact, by Gregory Benford, is the former. What Mr. Benford (himself a physicist) has tried to do is basically create a story around the concept of a new element and/or set of scientific standards.

The story opens with a young architect, Claire, working feverishly on an archaelogical site in Greece. The story itself is set in a very near future, where Greece has decided to revert to socialism and California somehow decides to chop itself in to two. Claire, meanwhile, is only interested in the unique finds she’s discovering, while simultaneously trying to hold off the Greece site controller (who is also one of the up-and-coming leaders of the social rebellion). Finally she discovers something that just shouldn’t be in the dig site, which sets off a series of events leading to the discovery of a whole new world of science.

I hate to say it - Artifact leaves the reader disappointed. I was eager to chew through an “aliens left something underground” story a-la Michael Crichton’s Sphere, but instead the story of this element is pretty tame. There are really 2 parts of Benford’s writing that are frustrating. For one, the dialogue is contrived and flows horribly. Characters in his story apparently aren’t comfortable conjugating. Secondly, he plays out the “New England versus the South” subplot between two main characters in a rediculous fashion. The setting that he contrives is one where Southern mathematicians and Northeastern archaeologists are from totally different worlds and stunned at the existance of the other. It just didn’t play out right, and left me saying, “Ok, get back to the super weapon!”

At the end of it all is an attempt at climax which, sadly, leaves the obvious nemesis to succumb to his inevitable fate, while the hero and heroine live out a happily ever after.

The story isn’t completely flawed. I give Benford a lot of credit for knowing a LOT more about the periodic table and other scientific stuff than I could ever grasp. But I think that’s sorta the problem - at the end of the story you realize that Benford knows his stuff, but the topic he was trying to convey is just a hair above the average science fiction enthusiast. I read sci-fi to be entertained, not confused and feeling stupid. A great author can take a complex mathematical or physics topic and convey it using ordinary concepts; sadly Benford may need a little more practice to make it worthwhile.

Well, wandering the web a little bit this morning, I stumbled across a preview for a new Will Smith movie, titled I Am Legend. Considering I’ve been a fan of a lot of Will Smith movies (and he does have a flair for science fiction: think Independence Day, Men In Black, I Robot), I decided to check it out. Apple is hosting the preview trailer (click to view).

Then, like I normally do, I checked out IMDB and Hollywood Stock Exchange for some more scoops on the movie itself. It looks like it’s actually a scifi horror flick adapted from a novel of the same title written by Richard Matheson, who also is given writing credits on the screenplay.

Essentially, the storyline goes that there is a plague or virus that wipes out all of humanity, with the exception of our hero Robert Neville (Will Smith), who spends years uninterrupted and searching for other survivors. It turns out, though, that the survivors he’s been seeking are actually (wait for it) … bloodsucking vampires! It looks like this movie is going to have many veins of storyline similar to Dawn of the Dead, and 28 Days Later. I have faith in Will Smith though, he tends to keep his movies relatively light and frankly he’s a fun actor to watch.

On Amazon’s page for the original book, there are some interesting influential footnotes by some pretty famous names, including:

“The most clever and riveting vampire novel since Dracula.” –Dean Koontz

“I think the author who influence me the most as a writer was Richard Matheson. Books like I Am Legend were an inspiration to me.” –Stephen King

Thinking that this book has influenced these two multimillionaire authors as well as numerous film adaptations, I think I’ll have to add it to my reading list. Of course, I’ll be sure to add more information about the movie as it becomes available. Also, while the original release was to be in November, it looks like it’s actually going to be released in mid-December.

Edit: Here’s the trailer (you can still go to Apple for the HD one)

Whenever I travel, I try to take at least 1 or 2 good novels that I’ve been meaning to read or re-read, but I just took a trip where I wasn’t able to figure out what I wanted to take with me. I’ve cracked open an ancient Arthur C. Clarke book that’s sitting on my nightstand, but I just couldn’t figure out if I wanted to take it with me - so I wandered in to an airport bookstore and perused the shelves. While there, I faced the conundrum that’s faced millions of American travellers… Dean Koontz or Stephen King. Well, this time around, I opted for Stephen King, if only for the fact that the main book represented on the shelves was an anthology of short stories by him, titled Everything’s Eventual. Within this book are “14 Dark Tales”, including 1408, which is being made in to an upcoming movie starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. So, being the type of person that enjoys being able to say “oh… I read the book - and it’s better,” I decided to give it a shot.

The story itself is rather short spanning a mere 54 pages (and essentially 3 chapters), but as per King’s standard: it picks you up and doesn’t let go until you’re scared. The main character, Mike Enslin, is a man seeking supernatural events for his own success. Again, like many of King’s stories, the main character is a writer. I tend to believe that King truly enjoys fictionalizing himself and what he would do when presented with some of his own terrifying events. The character discovers the rumor of the Dolphin hotel in New York, that features a single room that has been home to numerous suicides and unexplainable phenomenon. The maids turn down the room once a month - and most that enter try not to be there for more than a fast turnaround.

When Enslin enters the room, at the sincere opposition of the hotel manager, he first chooses to believe that everything that is attached with the room is superstition. But within minutes he discovers that, while perhaps a ghost itself doesn’t reside in the place - the room itself doesn’t want him to live - to survive the night.

I don’t read much horror - I’m more of a space-travel scifi or post-apoc guy myself, but I will always commend King for his ability to give a reader goosebumps. The only other title of his that I’ve actually read from start-to-finish is Dreamcatcher, and even that I only saw after seeing the movie. Suffice it to say that the hollywood version of the story actually looks pretty good, and I’m also a fan of John Cusack - so that helps. If you’re looking for some great quick reads that can send some shivers down your spine, King’s Everything’s Eventual book of short stories might be worth your time.

Edit: Here’s the trailer for the upcoming movie… Releasing July 13th.

Truth be told, I’m a sucker for page-turning science fiction thrillers, and almost nobody does it better than Michael Crichton. Prey was written in 2004, and features a chilling tale of nanotechnology gone awry.

The story begins with Jack, a stay-at-home-dad not necessarily by choice, but by requirement. His wife, Julia, works for a startup company that’s working on cutting edge nano technology, and Jack recently suffered a significant setback in his career.

What follows in Prey leads Jack to question whether or not his loving wife of more than a decade is having an affair on him. She’s dressing more seductively, spending less and less time at home, and nearly ignoring her children. Beyond that, her demeanor is erratic: one minute she’s enraged by little family matters, and the next she’s trying to play the part of a nice home maker. But when Jack finally reaches the breaking point, everything changes within a few short hours. His former company calls him, requesting his urgent return to work as a contractor for Julia’s company - and his background of distributed computing and intelligent agents becomes the focal point of the next few harrowing hours.

Prey is, simply put, a novel about the potential future of nanotechnology. Out in the Nevada desert, the company that Julia works for has built a nano prodution facility that has gone wrong - what was supposed to be a secure manufacturing facility is now a breeding ground for a rapidly developing form of nearly intelligent life.

I’ve read several of Crichton’s books, including Jurrasic Park, Next, Sphere, and State of Fear, and each one of them has an amazing amount of depth, even as a page turning thrill ride. It’s almost impossible to put down Prey - each chapter cliffhangs on to the next. The story itself is told in less than a week of time, which really propels the drama forward. Flipping through the last 5 pages of the novel reveals dozens of sources that Crichton used to research the novel. In individual pieces the current nanotech research is fairly limited, but Crichton takes a leap forward and combines numerous facets of this new technology to create the nemesis we discover in Prey.

I’m not one to feel necessarily threatened by the future of nanotechnology. I’ll be the first to say that I think innovations like carbon nanotubes will truly put the world on a new pace of advanced construction - perhaps even my favorite - the development of a space elevator. A guy can dream, can’t he? But what Crichton points out deftly in this novel is that we must keep a close eye on those companies that are innovating nanotechnologies, because a misstep could result in dramatic and potentially devestating failure.

One of the authors that lies somewhere between horror / thriller and science fiction that I enjoy is Dean Koontz. I have no idea how he manages to churn out so many stories year after year, but his tales are uniformly well written, if possibly formulaic. There’s usually a hero with extraordinary powers, and almost all of his stories feature dogs, too.

The Taking was published in 2004, but like much of what you read here on SciFi-Guy.com, I like to keep myself surrounded by great fiction no matter when the novel was published or the movie was created.

To begin The Taking, we’re greeted with a loving couple of mis-matched likeness in a quiet lake town in Southern California. What follows is a tale that Koontz cues up with vivid imagery - of a dark and terrifiying night where nothing makes sense and few have a chance for survival. This is a grizly story, and definitely in the realm of horrific science fiction, but Koontz meanwhile creates characters that we the reader imminently want to succeed and make it.

The strength of Koontz’s The Taking is on the question of what would happen if suddenly humanity was faced with the deepest, darkest horrors of our minds - and whether or not an alien invasion could take the form of a psychological mind game. The main character, Molly, is forced to constantly evaluate who is trustworthy and who should be feared, as her and her husband try to rescue those that seem immune from the terrors that are bestowed upon this dark night. Not only that, but she’s forced to face her darkest pains from her past, including a psychopathic father that shouldn’t be there. The town itself is drawn vividly, so that the reader is immersed in a “purple fog” in what’s obviously a small town.

Truth be told, this is a page turner, plain and simple. It’s hard to find a place to leave off because each harrowing moment of Molly’s adventure leads to another question. The most pressing question Koontz’s asks was actually written by another science fiction writer years ago - what would an alien invasion of a species thousands of years more advanced than us look like? What would they do to colonize this world, and would we know the difference between madness and chaos versus the planned extermination of humankind.