Blogs / Science Not Fiction

With buzz already building for The Road, a post-apocalyptic movie starring Viggo Mortensen set to come out sometime in 2009, Science Not Fiction decided to take at look at some of our favorite after-the-end-of-the-world scenarios. I excluded the various incarnations of War of Worlds because the book is basically an extended flashback from the safety of a rebuilt future, and the movies are apocalyptic rather than post-apocalyptic. Similarly Independence Day and Deep Impact are about averting armageddon. Twelve Monkeys and Oryx and Crake have post-apocalyptic scenes, but the back bone of their narrative is firmly in the pre-apocalyptic world–the selections below are all about life in the no-holds-barred aftermath. So in chronological order:

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Science Not Fiction was saddened to learn of the death of Michael Crichton yesterday. His 1969 novel, The Andromeda Strain, alone would have been enough to make him a science fiction legend, but he turned out string of taut technothrillers, even equalling The Andromeda Strain’s iconic status with 1990’s Jurassic Park.

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As noted over on 80 Beats, scientists using the Spitzer space telescope have found strong evidence that Epsilon Eridani has a solar system not unlike our own, with rocky planets orbiting in the inner solar system and gas giants orbiting further out.

Science fiction writers must have breathed a collective sigh of relief, as Epsilon Eridani has been used in countless novels, short stories, TV shows, and movies as the location of more-or-less Earth like planets. Nothing dates a science fiction story like the cold hand of reality, such as when Mars was revealed to be a cratered desert with not a canal in sight, or when the clouds of Venus were shown to be concealing a lethal landscape of shattered rock, rather than lush jungle swamps.

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The folks over at Television Without Pity write snarky recaps of television shows that range from pop-phenom American Idol to critical darling Mad Men; the recaps are often more fun than the actual program (for whatever reason, they have had difficulty putting science fiction shows into the mix, with some famously unreadable reviews of Doctor Who for example, but their Eureka recappers are pretty good.) In the video above, they do nice job of dissecting the trailer for the much-anticipated Watchman movie, adapted from the influential graphic novel of the same name.

City of Ember opened on Friday, a beautifully visualized adaption of the book of (almost) the same name. The eponymous city is actually the ultimate bunker, a settlement located in a vast underground cavern and designed to sustain a community for 200 years following the apocalypse. Unfortunately, more than 200 years have passed and the systems that sustain the city are beginning to break down, most notably the giant generator that is the sole source of electricity. This is a particular problem as the inhabitants are sealed in, with no memory of any existence beyond the boundaries of the city. The exit instructions eventually fall into the hands of two youngsters who must battle social inertia and a corrupt mayor to escape the coming darkness.

The ignorance of the population is actually the result of a deliberate decision by the city’s builders. In order to keep the population tucked safely away for 200 years, the builders decided to remove the temptation of the surface world by excluding any record of its existence–and to make sure curious inhabitants stay within the cavern, technologies such as batteries and candles are excluded as well, literally tethering would-be explorers to a power outlet.

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There’s a scene in the movie Babylon A.D., which opened Friday, where Mélanie Thierry’s character, Aurora, escapes from her guardians through a crowded post-apocalyptic marketplace and is suddenly confronted by two cloth-covered cages. She stares at the cages and as the camera zooms in, the audience realizes that something big is prowling about inside. The cage-porters whip the cloth off (Don’t ask why. This movie does not answer well to “Why?”) , and we see a pair of Siberian tigers pacing angrily and growling at the crowd. Aurora was raised in a convent, and the sight of the tigers awes her, not least because she knows (somehow) that tigers had been extinct for decades.

The plot of the film is set in some indeterminate future, and it centers on Aurora’s journey from Russia to America in the company of Sister Rebeka (Michelle Yeoh as a badass nun) and Toorop, the hard hard-bitten, badass mercenary (Vin Diesel, who plays no other kind of mercenary, right Riddick fans?).

Anyway, there’s the market place, there’s the tigers, there’s Aurora as Toorop and Sister Rebeka come up behind her. Toorop is not so impressed, later dismissing the beasts as “copies. Clones of clones. Fakes.”

But why so dismissive, Toorop? (more…)

The latest installment in the Stargate franchise has arrived: Stargate Continuum. After the Stargate: SG-1 TV series was cancelled in 2007, the producers opted to bring back the cast in a series of direct-to-DVD movie releases (also available on iTunes and Blu-Ray). Perhaps surprisingly, even after 10 seasons of the original SG-1 and four seasons of its spin-off Stargate Atlantis (the fifth season is currently airing), the Stargate universe feels far from played out, as demonstrated by Continuum. In the Stargate universe, planets throughout the galaxy are linked by a network of wormholes created by the stargates, artifacts of a long-departed civilization. The U.S. Air Force has one of these gates, which it keeps stashed beneath Cheyenne Mountain. Teams sally forth through the gate to explore alien worlds. The producers have done an excellent job of expanding the premise of the original 1994 movie that launched the franchise.

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Independent observers confirm that our panel was “awesome.” Many, many thanks to Jaime Paglia (Eureka), Kevin Grazier (BSG) and our very own Phil Plait for making the magic happen.

We also went out for dinner with the Eureka writing crew, including Jaime Paglia and Eric Wallace. For the record, any time you want to go out for a few bottles of Sangiovese and a couple hours of talking about Doctor Who, Torchwood, Veronica Mars, the OC and Friday Night Lights, you can count me in. For the complete inside dope from Eric (including their potentially disastrous Comic Con A/V snafu), go to Eureka Unscripted.

More personal Comic Con highlights after the jump.

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The hype machine was cranking in Ballroom 20 at Comic-Con this afternoon for Quantum Quest, a 3-D animated feature about “Dave the photon” who leaves the sun to “save his people and save the Cassini spacecraft from the forces of fear and ignorance.”

Clearly, we wish these guys well. Nothing would make us happier at Discover than to have an astronomy movie written by NASA scientists penetrate the public consciousness in some meaningful way.

That being said, we hope they have a good editor, because the amount of information conveyed at this panel was overwhelming.

Here is just a small portion of my notes from the session: (more…)

I blame the Independence Day holiday for not seeing this fantastically good news sooner: most of the lost footage of Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis has been found in Argentina. For decades, audiences have had to make do with the cut down version that distributers produced to make the film more accessible (Lang’s original version ran about three-and-a-half hours long.) Unfortunately, some things about the movie don’t really make sense in the distributors version. Devotees helped by creating versions with title cards sprinkled throughout that told viewers the best guess as to what happened in the deleted scenes, but now guesses can be replaced with the truth of Lang’s vision.

Metropolis spins a tale of class warfare in a futuristic city that was the forerunner of Judge Dredd’s Megacity One, Bladrunner’s Los Angeles, DC Comic’s Gotham, and many other science fiction cities.

Metropolis is an important movie, not least for creating the character of Maria, a beautiful robot that can be considered the direct ancestor of Battlestar Galactica’s Six. But the movie’s most significant influence was on real world architecture: Lang was inspired by the rash of skyscrapers going up in places like New York City, and extrapolated the new skylines for his sets. In turn, architects, planners and futurists were inspired by his movie and brought elements of Lang’s fictional city into designs for real urban developments in a classic feedback loop between science fiction and science fact.

If you saw my list of underrated science fiction movies, you’ll know that I love a good ending. For me a great ending is when the movie really uses those last seconds to add something to the storyline (or even transform your perception of the whole movie), so that you sit watching the credits trying to digest what just happened. (I’ve nothing against epilogue-style endings–I’m looking at you, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King–but they’re not great in and of themselves.) Again, your suggestions welcome! (Also, beware spoilers!)

• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, original ending). This movie brings home the bacon of paranoia as the helpless protagnist screams at the movie watching audience that they’re next.
• Planet of the Apes (1968) Quite possibly the best ending of a movie ever, I can still remember the shattering shock of discovering the identity of the Planet of the Apes when I first saw this movie.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Sure, the voyage Beyond the Infinite is confusing, but the very final shot of the Star Baby gazing upon the Earth speaks to the promise of the future that’s built into the film’s DNA.
• Dark Star (1974) A philosophical showdown with a sentient bomb taken to its logical conclusion accompanied by brilliant dialogue.
• Bladerunner (1982, original ending) A great twist at the end, but one which met significant opposition, and the meaning of which wasn’t confirmed by director Ridley Scott until decades later.
• The Terminator (1984) Okay, so yes, the end of this movie does herald the otherwise depressing prospect of inevitable nuclear war, but it’s defiance beautifully sums up the movie.
• Brazil (1985, original ending) Yes, it’s depressing. But then, did you see the rest of the movie?
• Back to the Future (1985) Admittedly, it’s not particularly thought-provoking, but the flying-car ending of this movie deserves its place for being just an awesome kick in pants.
• Twelve Monkeys (1995) The uncompromising logic of the movie gets taken to its grinding conclusion, along with a clever little twist.
• Contact (1997) I liked the idea here that the super-advanced and super-manipulative aliens that screwed the protagonist over weren’t all powerful.

As I mentioned before, I expected a few of this summer’s big science fiction movies to be overrated: sadly, for me, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army was one of those. As I said on Friday, I enjoyed the first Hellboy because of its H.P. Lovecraft overtones. Lovecraft’s fiction was inspired by the cosmological shift in our perception that occurred in the first decades of the 20th century: Edwin Hubble proved that the universe was incredibly bigger than anyone had suspected, with island galaxies separated by vast voids; Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity demolished the previously rock-solid absolutes of time and space; and a cabal of quantum theorists played merry buggers with the definition of reality. Lovecraft’s writing spoke to the dark underbelly of uncertainty and insignificance that could be inspired by new discoveries: his stories are often about scientists plunged into events that are way over their heads.

Minus the Lovecraft, Hellboy 2 is simply average superhero fare, borrowing heavily from the original celtic folklore regarding fairies and elves (by “original” I mean before the Victorian era turned fairies into pretty winged sprites and Tolkien turned elves into beautiful warrior-snobs.) In this folklore, elves and fairies are generally best avoided due to their capacity for malevolence—Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies is a great contemporary take on this. Despite the lavish visuals, it’s all rather predictable, featuring not one, but two, romantic subplots.

Oh well. At least I did enjoy the season five opener of Stargate Atlantis, as Robert Picardo becomes a regular cast member. I’ve liked Picardo’s performances since China Beach, and his character of the reluctantly self-aware medical AI on Star Trek: Voyager was the most interesting thing on that show. Fingers crossed for the rest of the season.

Two of my favorite science fiction franchises premiere their latest installments tonight: Hellboy II: The Golden Army opens in cinemas and Stargate Atlantis returns to television on the SCI FI channel for its 5th season.

With its supernatural overtones, some might quibble over whether or not Hellboy is really science fiction. putting it instead into the fantasy category. But Hellboy clearly draws from the tradition of horror science fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft, who, in his stories, created a complex and rich universe in which humanity is only a paper-thin dimensional wall away from malignant entities that regard us a little more than ants scurrying underfoot.

Stargate Atlantis, the spinoff from the successful Stargate: SG1 TV show (which was itself a spinoff from the 1994 Stargate movie) is also set in a rich (if considerably less bleak) universe. Since the Stargate franchise moved to television in 1997, the producers have done a great job in creating a believable and consistent constellation of advanced physics and technologies that form the background of Atlantis and SG1. They also deserve credit for how they’ve structured the show: idea-of-the-week plots are carefully balanced with long term character and story arcs, meaning that even after hundreds of episodes across both shows, casual or new viewers can still watch the show without feeling lost (something that became a problem with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bablyon 5 for example) while devoted fans get rewarded too.

Check back on Monday for my thoughts on both of tonight’s openings!

The latest cinematic version of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth opens this Friday, staring the ever-likeable Brendan Frasier. Frasier’s character, (Professor Trever Anderson), his nephew and local Icelandic guide find themselves having hair-raising adventures as they voyage through underground seas and landscapes populated with all manner of bizzare plants and animals. Verne’s original book was published in 1864, a time when quite a few people took very seriously the idea that the Earth was hollow–and inhabited. In this they were inspired by a scientific proposal by Edmund Halley (of Halley’s comet fame) that turned out to be not completely off the mark.

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