Tag: science fiction

“Wool” Hugh Howey

This book pushes so many of my buttons (in a good way) – it’s post-apocalypse, it’s not a generation ship* but in many ways it’s the same as a generation ship. And it’s got that thing that hooks me into Sherri S. Tepper’s books (but without the Moral) – there’s something rotten deep in the centre of the society and half the fun is figuring it out as the characters do. (Not quite as straightforward as it being a dystopia, something about the way the rottenness is set-up/revealed.)

*J points out that he didn’t know what I meant by generation ship, so perhaps I should explain 🙂 I mean a spaceship travelling to another star at below light-speed, and all the people in it are awake, so over the time of the journey there are several generations and gradually the society stops believing in anything other than the ship. Normally in these sorts of stories there’s also some disaster (contrived or natural) that means records are lost.

The whole world that the protagonists know consists of an underground bunker, which has just one set of observation screens on the top floor out of the hundred or so floors. Society has stratified – engineers are in the lower levels and keep the place running but aren’t really appreciated for it. IT are important, and it’s not quite clear why to start with, and they’ve got a whole floor/suite of floors to themselves. The middling floors have the middling people. And up the top are people like the mayor, the sheriff and other officials. And the viewing screens, showing the dead dead world outside.

Resources are limited as you’d expect in that sort of scenario – they might as well be in a spaceship. If you want to have children you & your spouse need to win the lottery after someone dies. And expressing any interest in the outside world is firmly squashed – if you dare say it out loud then you are sentenced to “cleaning”. Out you go in a suit to clean the cameras for the view screens, and die in the toxic atmosphere when the suit inevitably gives way. Everyone who’s sentenced says they won’t clean, and then they do … and the first part of the book ends with an explanation of that, from the point of view of the man doing the cleaning. But there’s something rotten in the centre of this society and we haven’t found it yet, just the first hints.

Not going to spoil the book, that would be a shame. But it does make it a bit hard to talk about 🙂

I liked the way the various characters felt nuanced and real. The character I was least keen on was the chap who seemed to be there just to be the love interest, but thinking about it a bit more he’s actually also doing something useful in the book in terms of showing us what’s going on. So not just the love interest. And the antagonist isn’t a moustache-twirling villain, you can see he’s the hero of his own story even if what he does is repugnant. You can even sympathise with the aims of some of the rottenness – this is a resource limited pressure-cooker environment and wide-spread disorder could be completely fatal. But the methods are not something I can sympathise with even as I can see that it’s being done out of a sense that this is the best way to do it.

There’s an excerpt for the next book in the series (trilogy?) at the end, and it looks like it’ll go back to the beginning and tell us how the world got to the state it’s in in this book. There’s still something rotten at the centre, and we haven’t got there yet. I’ve got that reserved from the library now. (Thinking about buying these, but I think I want to know if the next book is as good first.)

Doctor Who: Hide

We were away for the weekend, but we still managed to watch Doctor Who on Saturday – I just didn’t get round to writing it up till I got home 🙂

SPOILERS AHEAD! Hover mouse over text to read, or read on entry page:

And it was another historical drama set within my lifetime, seriously, what’s up with that? This time it was only by a couple of months but even so!

Anyway, age-related-wibbling aside I enjoyed that episode. The ghost story was pretty well done, even if it felt a lot like it was also the figleaf for the season-arc stuff that seemed to be going on underneath (in an understated way). I liked that we got all the proper ghost story things – things moving around in the corner of your eye, strange noises, cold spots, holding hands only that’s not my hand, psychic connections and more. And then because Doctor Who is science fiction (well, science fantasy) we got our reason for it all in a science-y sounding fashion. I loved the idea of the Doctor going and taking snapshots throughout the whole of the history of Earth to see if the ghost really was standing still. And Clara’s reaction to the end of the world … mmm, I guess that’s part of the “she’s normal” thing? I dunno. I guess I’m personally a lot less phased by the idea that even the planet has an expiration date? So it just felt weird that she freaked out that much, but then Rose did too, and I don’t remember anyone rolling their eyes at that in the gestalt of (the bits of) online fandom (I read). So mebbe it’s me out of step here.

(Also – 6 billion years ago for the first one? Er, no, the Earth is supposed to be 4.5 billion years old. Dunno why that bugged me when so much of the science is way off base & I can roll with it, but it did bug me.)

Lots of paralleling going on – I like the way the Professor & the Doctor were so explicitly set up as matching. (Particularly as Ace called the Seventh Doctor “Professor” and Ace was my favourite Old Who companion). Not just the “here’s you the boffiny scientist thing, and here’s your ‘companion'” (incidentally – I guess the “oh it’s the 70s she’s your ‘assistant'” is a 3rd Doctor (UNIT era) reference). But also the thing about how he’d sent people to their deaths, done dreadful things for his country (people) (universe), and that changes you. And you need to find something or someone to live for afterwards. I’ve a feeling there was more I wanted to say about that conversation in the darkroom and their introduction conversation, but it’s gone from my mind now. But there was a lot of talking where both are talking about the Professor, but they could be talking about the Doctor without changing any of the words.

Also the love stories. Professor meets assistant (clearly reproduce see exhibit A of the ghost/great-umpteenth granddaughter). Boy-monster meets Girl-monster. And, er, was it really wise of the Doctor to bring them both to this world? What do they eat/do? Where are they going to live? Not that they did anything except accidentally terrify people. It’s a bit of a loose end tho.

And so, so, so NOT a love story = the Doctor & Clara. He’s still suspicious, the TARDIS doesn’t like her (and the feeling is so utterly mutual). And that arm over her shoulder while talking about true love is nothing significant, no no no. To be fair I’m not sure where that’s going – is it just that he’s relaxing into her company (coz she is, after all, his type) and has to keep catching himself because there’s still that mystery about the multiple Claras? And then the TARDIS uses another image of Clara to talk to Clara? Previously we saw that system work with Amelia-TARDIS talking to the Doctor so what’s the significance of Clara being the choice to talk to Clara?

Also – the “splinter of ice in his heart”. Is that the suspicion he has for Clara? Or is this misdirection (of both us & Clara) and what Emma picks up is actually the lingering effects of the Doctor’s actions in the Time War (and the sort of characterisation that the Seventh Doctor had, the manipulation & trickster-god thing)? (And J pointed out that there’s another parallel here – the “heart of the house” is where the cold spot is.)

Speaking of misdirection – the Doctor waxing lyrical about first the Professor, then talking about the ghost. But really, it’s all about that one short conversation with Emma where she confirms (again) that Clara is just what she seems. And that’s why he doesn’t seem to pay any attention to Emma – he doesn’t want anyone else (Clara) to notice what’s important here, so we get all the babbling and stuff to keep us (Clara) focussed on the wrong thing.

Between writing the rest of this & it posting I’ve read some other reviews: The “blue crystal from Metebellis 3” is also a Third Doctor reference. So we do continue that theme.

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Doctor Who: Cold War

Well, that was an unexpected effect of this week’s Doctor Who – it made me remember how old I am! 😉 Seriously – it was a historical drama, set within my life time.

SPOILERS AHEAD! Hover mouse over text to read, or read on entry page:

And not only that, but the script had to gloss the terms “Cold War” and “Mutual Assured Destruction”. Because there are adults alive today who were born after the 80s. To be fair the first current affairs event I remember really paying attention to was the Berlin Wall coming down so really I’m post-Cold War in my adult paying-attention life. But the (recently-written) science fiction I consumed in the 80s was often post-apocalyptic “what life is like after the nukes have done their job”, so there was definitely some of that sense of being only one button press away from The End of the World. Just one ideologically sound soldier’s reaction away from doom.

They conveyed that well, I thought. The second in command(? political officer?) with his fanatical fervour, and the claustrophobia of mind to go with the claustrophobia of the reality of the submarine. And the way the two superpowers are facing each other down and all the rest of world can do is hold their breaths and hope – nicely paralleled with the Ice Warrior & the Doctor (both incomprehensibly powerful beings) facing off at the end of the episode.

Awesome casting having the guy who played Brutus in Rome (TV series on HBO) being the fanatical officer, who even tries to conspire with the alien to bring about the destruction of the US. And that also ties back into the theme – “I’ll destroy us if I have to, if that’s the only way to stop you”. Overt from the Doctor, implicit for the Soviet submarine crew.

Dead mothers last week. Lots of father/daughter stuff going on this week. Both actual and metaphorical. Interesting partly because I felt Clara’s characterisation was “off” but the stereotyped hole she was filling wasn’t so much “every man’s desire” but “every man’s daughter”. She’s looking for fatherly approval from the Doctor (“did I do OK?”) and the Professor treats her like a daughter. And in the final stand-off she reminds the Ice Warrior of his daughter, both literally by talking to him about his daughter and metaphorically (it’s her singing that impels him to mercy).

But her characterisation did seem a little shaky, which is a shame. One thing I did like tho, was that she was shown having to come to terms with the actual reality of life travelling with the Doctor. Not just the traditional “whoops, not where we thought we’d be”, but culture shock (language, culture, history can change so we could die here and the world end) and most of all that people would die and die messily. And it all just got real. And for a change we see her having difficulty processing it (and I felt that was presented sympathetically – it’s outside her experience so of course she finds it difficult to cope with).

Singing was important again as well – the Professor diffusing the tense drill by bursting in singing (badly) along with “Vienna”. Then the Ice Warrior & his fond last memory of his daughter. And the Professor trying to get Clara to sing “Hungry Like the Wolf” with him. And of course, the singing Clara does right at the end to remind the Ice Warrior that the Earth is full of people’s daughters. It’s probably coincidence, but having this episode straight after The Rings of Akhaten did make the singing stand out.

References abounded – if last week was all Star Wars & Star Trek, this was Hunt for Red October and Alien in aesthetic. And J said some of the sounds were fairly Predator-esque. And all with that claustrophobic one-push-of-that-button-and-we’re-dead thing.

Things I didn’t like: The mcguffin that got rid of the TARDIS. I mean, I know it had to be gone to make the plot work, but that was lame. The “oh give us a lift” at the end – obviously the captain of the submarine so, so, so can’t do that. But how the hell do they get there without him? Also, and less nitpicky-ly, I didn’t like the way Clara barely does anything but “be a daughter” and do what she’s told.

Overall I’d rate it “reasonable”, whilst still enjoying it (a large part due to that whole Cold War thing, and the way they paralleled that across the plot and the setting).

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“Before the Golden Age 3” ed. Isaac Asimov

The third and final volume of Isaac Asimov’s autobiographical anthology of short stories from the 1930s covers 1935-1938. And as with the other volumes it’s a bit hit & miss. Some of the misses have aged poorly, some I suspect I’d never’ve enjoyed even if I were a young lad in the 1930s.

I’ve been re-reading this with an eye to diversity – partly, I confess, because it’s easier to see here than it is in fiction from my own era. The original impetus is that there’s a fair amount of conversation around SFF fandom in the last few years about this sort of issue – like this post in Elizabeth Bear’s livejournal which addresses the idea that somehow if you have a protagonist or primary character who isn’t able-bodied/white/Western/straight/cis-male then you need to justify it otherwise you’re just “being PC”. Rather than, you know, writing a story about a person who’s as much of a person as any other person. And as I say, it’s easier in general to pay attention to in these stories because I’m not steeped in the culture of the 1930s like I am in my own (and the only difference between me & the “default” is that I’m female so it’s easy to have a blind spot). Sort of practising the thought patterns for future use.

So I’d been looking for women or lack thereof in these stories. And the racism jumped out at me, and would’ve done if I was looking or not – that’s something where we’ve really come a long way since the 30s. But I haven’t really mentioned the other sorts of categories where people get elided into non-existence or caricatured. People with disabilities & transpeople are mostly Sir Not Appearing in this Universe – although there’s some pretty poor portrayals of mental illness (like the madman in “Minus Planet”). And really I’m not sure I can say much more than that about it.

Sexuality is an odd one though – in the vast majority of these stories it doesn’t feel like any of the people have any sort of sexuality, they’re not even asexual it just isn’t a thing. Even some of the ones with “romance subplots” (like the dreadful Meek stories in volume 1), you aren’t left with an impression that these people fancy each other, or even like each other. It feels like the author is aware that people get married, but has no idea why. A large part of that is style, of course, and differences in the culture of what’s appropriate to talk about. But some of the stories do manage to build that feeling even without anything explicit – taking an example from this volume “Proxima Centauri” has a love match that feels like a(n overwrought, fairly chaste) love match. And then there’s the ones like “Minus Planet” where to my modern eyes the two male protagonists read as gay (in a chaste & understated way). Particularly in comparison to “Proxima Centauri”. In both cases the main character goes off on a mission/trip that may well end in death, and in each case the “love interest” goes with him. The woman because she can’t live without him, the man because he can’t let him go alone. And I’m left wondering if that’s a modern reading pushed back inappropriately, or if it was a deliberate but subtle hint that would’ve been picked up by someone of the time. I’m not sure where, if anywhere, I’m going with this but it’s something that struck me.

A note on the notes that follow – I read this on the plane to & from Berlin, and only took notes on the way out so the second half are written after a few weeks gap.

1935

“The Parasite Planet” Stanley G. Weinbaum

Tale of derring do on the frontier – this frontier being Venus. Strength of the story is the exotic, alien & deadly wildlife. Weakness of the story is the romance plot, although if the last paragraph about how they would get married immediately wasn’t there then it’d be a little less out of nowhere.

“Proxima Centauri” Murray Leinster

Ship travels to other star to colonise. Might not be a generation ship as it was only 7 years, but that’s the feel. Tedium leads to social breakdown, leads to segregation between officers & crew – this sets up the “love triangle” as the daughter of the commander is in love with a crew member but the second in command would like to marry her. Main plot is more interesting – the planet is inhabited by intelligent carnivorous plants who value animal flesh more than we value gold. Death & Doom follow (though our plucky heroes win the day, kinda).

“The Accursed Galaxy” Edmond Hamilton

Meteor lands, turns out to be a strange polyhedron. Reporter who finds it calls in a scientist who opens it under instruction from the being within, who tells its story before being freed. And reveals the “awful truth” about our galaxy. Neat but implausible explanation for the expanding universe. Back to “women what are they?” tho, but at least that means no 1930s romance subplot.

1936

“He Who Shrank” Henry Hasse

Lab assistant to a mad scientist is injected with a potion that makes him perpetually shrink (and includes all sorts of things that keep him alive too). The atoms of each universe are the solar systems of the next. This is one of the stories that stuck in my mind over the years since I last read this – it holds up, I think.

“The Human Pets of Mars” Leslie Frances Stone

UFO lands, aliens have a look around, take a motley crew of humans back as pets. Eventually our plucky hero organises an escape. Too many of the secondary characters felt like types to me – the pompous privileged politician, the older organising matron, the shiftless black workman, the half-crazed black spiritual woman, the sweet girl child etc etc. The protagonist and the other primary characters aren’t much better, to be honest. I think this falls into the “neat idea, shame about the execution” category.

“The Brain Stealers of Mars” John W. Campbell, Jr

This reminded me a lot of Ray Bradbury and of Philip K. Dick. Claustrophobic paranoid story about chameleon type aliens living amongst the Martians. The (human) protagonists land, and discover these creatures who start mimicking them – 20 of each man, how do you tell which one was the real one? The solutions felt a little too neat (and the story feels like it worked, rather than being ambiguous), but this is Campbell and as I recall he liked the human protagonists of stories he bought as an editor to win. (And now I’m trying to remember where I’ve picked up my ideas about Campbell’s preferred tropes – maybe I’ll find a book on my shelves during my re-read that tells me.)

“Devolution” Edmond Hamilton

Pessimistic little story about the “true origins” of the human race. This seems to be a Hamilton theme, and he does do them well. Completely preposterous, mind you.

“Big Game” Isaac Asimov

Short-short by the man himself, as of age 21 – written in 1941 and unpublished before this anthology. It’s the “true story about what killed the dinosaurs”, and is as pessimistic as Hamilton (by whom it was inspired).

1937

“Other Eyes Watching” John W. Campbell Jr.

Non-fiction article about Jupiter. I confess to skimming this, and I think I’ve done so every single time I read this anthology. It’s in the purplest of purple prose, and I just can’t be bothered to pick the facts out of the flowers. It starts:

All space was flamed with an intolerable incandescence; for two thousand million miles, titanic streamers of flame shot out, wove and twined, streamers that flared dull-red and cooling where they stretched to breaking, then great clots that swirled in blue-white heat of new creation. Dimming slowly in the distance, the Wrecker was vanishing, the vagrant star that had lashed worlds out of the Sun as it swept by.

It makes my over-use of commas and run-on sentences look tame … Apparently it, and others like it, inspired Asimov to further being interested in science, tho.

“Minus Planet” John D. Clark

Antimatter planet approaches the Earth and will hit & cause catastrophe, but our plucky heroes spot it in time and save the day. Despite the best efforts of a random madman who’d like to stop them. Suffers terribly from “women, what are they??”. Not that memorable to be honest, I preferred “Born of the Sun” in the last volume (which was more science fantasy/horror than this, but at least it had a fun catastrophe).

“Past, Present and Future” Nat Schachner

Man of ancient Greece who winds up in the future Inca lands uses the “secrets of the Egyptians” to enter suspended animation looking for a better future. He’s joined (accidentally) by a (white) man of the 1930s. They wake up in the far future in an enclosed habitat because “the rest of the world is destroyed” – it’s a dystopia reminiscent of Huxley’s “Brave New World” with its castes of people for particular societal functions. Our heroes are better because they’re not stratified like this, they’re more human. And along with a throwback from the upper echelons of the future society they escape to explore the outside world. Interesting premise, but it feels like the story stops before it starts.

1938

“The Men and the Mirror” Ross Rocklynne

It’s a shame this is the story that ends the anthology, because I’ve never liked it. Two men, one a policeman chasing the other an outlaw. They are perfect gentlemen, being gentlemanly. And they discover an impossible physics problem in outer space, having gotten into a pickle they get out of it again by co-operating and using their superior intelligence. They are gentlemanly gentlemen once more. I tend to forget the plot between readings, because the soulless physics problem is actually marginally more interesting despite my general lack of interest in physics.

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Doctor Who: The Rings of Akhaten

Another week, another Doctor Who episode 🙂 Felt pretty epic this week, especially for just the “first trip” for the new companion. Of course, this is her fourth episode, so perhaps that’s part of it.

SPOILERS AHEAD! Hover mouse over text to read, or read on entry page:

I also liked the call backs to previous (New Who) companions second stories – Rose & Nine silhouetted against the exploding sun, Amy & Eleven finding a little crying girl and that hooking them into the story (the Space Whale one). So I had to look up some other companions second stories – Donna’s second (er, if you don’t count her Xmas special appearance) was the Fires of Pompeii, and I did think the market place was reminiscent of the start of that episode and there’s the priestesses in red with their god. But unfortunately Martha’s second episode was the Shakespeare one, rather than Gridlock (with the singing). Oh well. Lots of resonance with early trips with companions anyway. I think that’s part of what made it feel epic, it gave it a feeling of being part of something bigger without hitting you over the head with it.

I thought they did a good job at keeping Clara’s characterisation right there in front of you in a natural seeming way – she doesn’t walk away from people, not her new friend, not her prior obligations (witness going home at the end of the trip). I hope when she eventually stays on the TARDIS it’s because she takes care of those obligations, rather than an accident (a la so many Old Who companions).

On that note, is the “came here with my Granddaughter” bit referring to an actual story or is it just a reference? Doesn’t much matter which it is, tho. I’m just curious about it.

Back to Clara – also we saw the personality traits that are why she’s looking after her “friends of the family”‘s kids and why she was a nanny in Victorian times. Her response to the scared girl felt like someone who likes kids and knows how to deal with kids, and who can’t pass a child in distress by.

Those scenes also tied into the larger theme of the episode – which is a cliché really, but still a good one: True courage is being scared and doing it anyway. Or maybe it’s that everyone’s scared and at a loss for what to do sometimes, but the Right Thing To Do is to try your best anyway.

Some things that drew our attention to the season arc (in more subtle ways than the opening sequence) – the Doctor explaining to Merry how she’s unique and special (just like everyone else). But of course, there’s 3 Claras so far (or are the two we saw first later in her timeline – I don’t know that we’ve seen enough during those episodes to believe that it’s not someone who already knows the Doctor but knows he doesn’t know her). Also, we had that bit where Clara was trying to take Merry to the TARDIS to hide. I heard it one way (“I don’t think she likes me”), J heard it another (“I don’t think he likes me”) but either way the scene drew our attention to the fact that this Clara doesn’t have a TARDIS key – the Doctor doesn’t trust her quite enough yet (unlike the Victorian Clara), coz what on earth is going on here with the three Claras? Like I said, J & I heard it differently – so I was also wondering why the TARDIS didn’t like Clara. Not actually sure who’s right (this week we didn’t have subtitles, last week they were stuck on coz we’d paused live TV and that seems to make our PVR put the subtitles on).

Also of note – lots of dead mothers/mother-type-things. Clara’s mother is dead, she’s nanny to a family whose mother is dead, Victorian-Clara is nanny to a family whose mother AND nanny are dead. Oswin’s mother wasn’t dead – wonder if that’s significant. And Merry was chosen when the last Queen of the Years was dead. Which feeds into me wondering about “Oh my stars!” as an expression – awfully odd, and first Ellie (Clara’s mother) uses it, then Clara herself. And Clara has inherited her mother’s travel book. Not sure where that’s going though. “Oh my stars” is still odd tho. So maybe significant? I liked the leaf/parents/origin story. Tho I was a bit surprised the leaf was “used up” quite so early in the story arc for the season.

And re-reading all of this – I really don’t watch Doctor Who for the plot, do I? 😉

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Doctor Who: The Bells of Saint John

Doctor Who is back! 🙂 And I think that episode got it off to a good start for the half-season. As usual, this isn’t so much a review as a collection of thoughts, hopefully coherent.

SPOILERS AHEAD! Hover mouse over text to read, or read on entry page:

So, a computer/hacking based TV story that I felt actually worked. OK, so if you stare too closely at the seams then you’ll find the holes to drive the truck through (and I did have one moment where I felt they tried to get too specific & thus the suspension of belief wobbled). But overall I thought they managed to be vague but truthy enough to make it work. (Truthy as in not necessarily true but sufficient for the story to convey the weight and heft of truth.)

I like the way the upgraded Clara & the Doctor complemented each other – he was “old-fashioned and hacked technology” and she knew that the people are always the weak link in a security system. Of course everyone had their workplace on facebook or some other social media site … mind you, that does constitute a bit of a plot hole – high security workplace might be expected to tell people they need to be careful about social media. But the other side of it (that you’d think the top people would be aware of what their employees were doing) is probably fair enough – they’re hacked & running software based on what the Great Intelligence wants/understands so I’m not surprised they were flawed in their understanding of human nature.

And we didn’t see the Great Intelligence coming across as particularly intelligent or able to deal with people in the Christmas special either. Thinking of that – I liked the way that sure the GI knows who the Doctor is and has Miss Kizlet watching out for him, but it’s personal and small scale. It’s because 150 or so years ago it met the Doctor, not because he’s some sort of universe wide saviour figure.

On that note, who is “the woman in the shop” who gave the “best in the universe helpdesk” number to Clara? Presumably that’ll turn out to be a plot point, once we get further into the who is Clara mystery. Still hoping that works out more emotionally true than previous Moffat mysteries, but still refusing to speculate (well, as much as I can help).

Seemed odd that the title of the episode turned out to be just that one early pun – the bells of Saint John being the TARDIS telephone. Incidentally, according to google and to wikipedia a longer version of Oranges & Lemons Say the Bells of St Clements than the one I know has the verse “Pokers & tongs, say the bells of St Johns”. Who knows if or how that’s relevant … last verse of the nursery rhyme is “Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head!”, ominous? Probably not.

I didn’t really buy Clara’s complete cluelessness about computers & the internet, but I did think they did well at showing how the computer skills package changed her. Even if the Doctor flagged it up by pointing out her joke about twitter, it still came across in the way she changed around the computer. I do hope the complete cluelessness isn’t a plot point tho (ie it has something to do with her previous Victorian incarnation), that’d feel a bit tedious I think.

I thought they did a good job of drawing out what’s the same about the various Claras – quick witted (with or without computer knowledge), sure of herself, and cares about other people. I also liked how her reaction to the Doctor’s invitation was “what, does that ever work??”. She’s not putting the Doctor up on a pedestal of “oh so special”, so even tho I’d rather it went down the Donna/Doctor friends route it feels less icky than, say, Doctor/Martha.

The end for the Great Intelligence’s human minions was pretty chilling. Well, for most of them it was just an awkward few years of amnesia. But for Miss Kizlet, the woman in charge it was horrific – she’ll grow up now, I guess, into a middle-aged woman’s body with a lot of her physical life behind her. I don’t think the actress quite pulled off the reversion to early childhood though (but she did a good job during the rest of the episode of making us think of a less ethical M-as-played-by-Judi-Dench). And the Great Intelligence not only got away scot free, but the Doctor doesn’t even know it was the same Big Bad as it was when he met the previous Clara.

Oh, and was I the only person who thought of the human Daleks when the sound effects for the twisting head started on the first spoonhead? So another reminder of previous Claras. The book the camouflage for the spoonhead came from was a nice shoutout to the Ponds too, understated but there for those of us who were paying attention.

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“Before the Golden Age 2” ed. Isaac Asimov

This is the middle volume of Isaac Asimov’s autobiographical look at the science fiction stories from the 1930s that influenced him. No absolute shockers here and I enjoyed reading all of the stories – they still suffer from the various -isms of the time but the sins are more of omission than commission which is a step in the right direction. I think my favourite would be “Sidewise in Time”.

1933

“The Man Who Awoke” Laurence Manning

Man invents a method of hibernation and goes to sleep so he can wake up 3000 years in the future & see the wondrous progress. It turns out not to be as simple as that – there’s been progress, but there’s also been a bewildering (to our protagonist) shift in attitudes to consumption. The biology of hibernation is very 1930s, but the future society which now lives in forests using mostly renewable resources, and carefully manages itself not to use up its resources feels a lot more of modern concept. As Asimov says in his afterword this wasn’t yet a fashionable thing to worry about. It’s still a very 1930s story tho, not only in narrative style but also – women, what are they? On the plus side the inhabitants of the future are brown-skinned yet have both good people and bad people and are treated just like people by the narrative.

“Tumithak in Shawm” Charles R. Tanner

Sequel to “Tumithak of the Corridors” which is in the first volume of this anthology. Tumithak now leads an army from his corridors to do battle with the alien shelk – through various twists & turns of the plot they join forces with another subterranean band of people (under Tumithak’s leadership, of course) and win the first real battles against the shelk! I particularly liked the way that Tumithak & co react believably to being out on the surface for the first time (and being the first generation to see the sun in 2000 years), and the way that they aren’t just obviously victorious from the beginning – we know the end because of the framing story of how Tumithak is a legendary hero, but there’s still tension and still mistakes and bad decisions. In looking to see if Tanner wrote any more I’ve discovered that all his published stories are freely available (on what looks like a legitimate website) so at some point I should read a few of the others.

1934

“Colossus” Donald Wandrei

Man travels & grows to burst through to a bigger universe where our whole universe is one of the atoms. This suffers somewhat from poor science even for the time (although as handwaves go, breaking the speed of light by drawing on “intra-spatial emanations and radiations” is right up there with reversing the polarity of the whatever). I think I might’ve preferred this story if it had explored the vaguely dystopian future-on-the-brink-of-war more, rather than had our hero go off on his journey. And if the girl had lived – she had an actual personality, a shame to have her killed off halfway through to make our hero sad & lonely as he travelled. It was nice that the aliens in the larger world actually seemed fairly alien in some of their attitudes & appealing to (effectively) their humanity didn’t work.

“Born of the Sun” Jack Williamson

What if the planets weren’t balls of rock or gas? What if they were actually eggs? A mix of horror (I want to say “Lovecraftian horror” but I haven’t actually read any Lovecraft) and science fiction – our hero learns the Awful Truth just in time and builds himself a spaceship. Reminded me a bit of a (science fiction) book I read several years ago based on Velikovsky‘s ideas, but only in that it takes “completely nutty science fantasy idea” and runs with it in a science fiction type of way. However, I didn’t like the romance subplot here – particularly not the patronising way the protagonist thinks of his fiancée, and could’ve done without the racist elements too (lots of exoticising stuff about the Oriental mind, and evil Chinese antagonists). And to modern eyes the ending looks less hopeful than I think was intended.

“Sidewise in Time” Murray Leinster

Some cosmic event happens & the world becomes a tapestry of scrambled pieces of different alternate histories for a time, before mostly descrambling itself – many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics suddenly made real. One man (Professor Minott) has figured out from the initial harbingers of the event that triggers it what’s about to happen and we get his story as he tries to lead a party of undergraduates to a land where he can rule the world, interspersed with vignettes of other events across the world. It’s also a take on a wish-fulfillment story for Minott, only his wishes don’t end up fulfilled – he’s just a maths lecturer at a tiny university, and he sees his chance to gain power & get the girl of his dreams, but in the end he’s not the swashbuckling hero he thinks he will be. In the hands of Meek (who wrote the dreadfully racist stories in the previous volume) this would’ve turned into White Man Reigns Supreme, but this story is much more nuanced and good – White Man gets his comeuppance and isn’t as clever or superior as he thinks he is. My favourites of the vignettes were where the nasty, mean-minded & abusive farmer gets eaten by a dinosaur & we’re very much expected to cheer as his wife realises that she might have gone mad (she’s not) but she’s free. And the Roman army (from a land where the Romans lasted into the 20th Century & conquered the Americas) descend upon a car and kill it because they think it’s a weapon, efficiently brutal. Oh, and a sad one where three diplodocuses (or some dinosaur of that general sort) get killed when they’ve wandered into a town – they’re just confused, poor things, they didn’t even mean to destroy anything 🙁

This made me think of Fred Hoyle’s “October the First is Too Late”, except there the scrambled Earth is in different time periods rather than different alternate universes. It’s been probably 20 years or more since I last read that book – it’s one that my parents own – and I can’t remember much about it except for the premise and the fact I liked it. Even the title and author took a bit of creative googling to figure out. Now I just need to remember by the next time I’m in Oxford that I want to re-read it! 🙂

“Old Faithful” Raymond Z. Gallun

Intelligent life on Mars communicating with Earth people. Told mostly from the perspective of the Martian – who is convincingly alien. He thinks differently, perceives differently, has a different sort of society, looks different, tolerates different atmospheric conditions. But despite all these differences the alien is a sympathetic character. And after 9 years of communication the understanding on both sides is still pretty fuzzy, it’s built up from the beginnings of the basics of arithmetic but they still don’t truely understand each other. Which is refreshing after all these stories where the aliens or whatever are human-ish and understanding is perfect after some minor stumbles.

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“Before the Golden Age 1” ed. Isaac Asimov

The Golden Age of Science Fiction is a phrase that commonly has two definitions – the first of these is the era when Campbell was editing Astounding Stories and the writers included people like Isaac Asimov. The other definition is that the golden age of science fiction is 12. That the stories that you read around that sort of age when you’re just discovering your own tastes in fiction are the ones that stick with you through your life. This anthology is a selection of stories that Isaac Asimov remembers reading in the 1930s – in his own personal golden age – that had an influence on his writing and thus on “The Golden Age”.

As an aside, I’m not sure I quite agree with either definition – both that those 1940s stories of The Golden Age aren’t (in large part because of my own age) going to be the best thing ever for me. And also that I think I’m still discovering new books & stories I think are as good or better than the things I read in my teens.

But still, as a conceit for an anthology it’s a good one, and as well as reprinting the stories Asimov writes about his own life. He comes across as very full of himself, but also aware of that and poking fun at his own ego. I suspect if I’d ever met him I’d’ve found him irritatingly smug, but the tone works OK in an autobiography.

This volume covers the years 1931 & 1932, when Asimov is 11 & 12. I bought it sometime in the mid-80s, about ten years after it was published. Its been years since I last read it, and mostly what I remembered was that the stories seemed dated, a few were still quite good but most were pretty “meh” to my more modern eyes. That’s a fairly accurate summary – with the addition that some are downright bad to my more grown-up modern eyes. The science tends to be wrong (either because we now know more, or because the author didn’t know what was known then), they tend to be full of info-dumps and “As you know, Bob” conversations. Some of them work despite this.

And they all have what one might euphemistically call “the attitudes of their time”. The sexism tends to be in the absence of women, and in the lack of personality for the women in those few stories with any female characters – the sort of thing you can excuse for any one story as being that the author just happened to choose a male protagonist. But when you look at the collection as a whole there’s a pattern – nobody thought a woman to be interesting enough to be the protagonist or even a primary character (with the exception of the alien in the Williamson story at the end). The racism is … mostly of the same sort. I wrote the little notes on the stories before I wrote this intro & you’ll spot the bit where I’m suddenly taken aback. There are three stories in the middle that are appallingly explicitly racist, two of them (a duology by Meek) to a degree where if you took the racism out there’d be no story left. I skim read the second of those, and wouldn’t’ve even done that if I hadn’t been going to write about the book.

I’ll be keeping the book, but boxed up – primarily for the autobiography and for the nostalgia.

1931

“The Man Who Evolved” Edmond Hamilton

Story about the future evolution of humanity, a morality tale of the “meddle not with things you do not understand” type. Also felt like the H. G. Wells story “The Time Machine”, in that it was a scientist building a contraption to find out how the human race developed & demonstrating it to his friends. The science is dreadful (evolution Does. Not. Work. Like. That. and I suspect even a biologist in the 1930s would wince at it) but the story is still compelling.

“The Jameson Satellite” Neil R. Jones

Another “what will it be like in the far future” tale. In this one a man works out how to perfectly preserve his body after he dies, by shooting it into space in a rocket to orbit the Earth. Much much later he’s discovered by aliens, who are metal men (Zoromes from the planet Zor, I kid you not) who were once biological but have transplanted their brains into metal bodies and now live forever. The science is equally as wince-making as the last one but I have a higher tolerance for bad orbital mechanics etc than I do for bad biology 😉 The “radium repulsion rays” to prevent meteors hitting the rocket were a bit much tho … It was still a fun story to read, I keep wanting to use the word “charming”.

“Submicroscopic”, “Awlo of Ulm” Capt. S. P. Meek

Woah, these two were very much a “product of their time” to an extent that they didn’t have anything to recommend them today. Man builds machine to shrink himself, finds submicroscopic land inhabited by beautiful white people who are being attacked by brutish black savages who want to eat them. The sequel introduces scientifically advanced cruel yellow people with slanty eyes who’d like to enslave them. The hero wins the day because he’s the WASPiest WASP that ever WASPed, and also has guns but if he hadn’t he’d still’ve won. Asimov notes in his afterword that he was uncomfortable with the “touches of racism” he noticed in his re-read, but I’d say that “touches” is inadequate to even begin to describe the level of racism. Oh, and sexist too – these are the first stories in the book to have a woman mentioned at all, but she’s not a person she’s a plot coupon. Save the princess, marry the princess, save the princess (again), duel someone to the death for the princess, duel someone (else) to the death for the princess, reflect on how you didn’t kill them brutally enough because of what they threatened to do to the princess… So I think that’s actually a step back from the woman-free state.

“Tetrahedra of Space” P. Schulyer Miller

A story in the tradition of Wells’ “War of the Worlds” – aliens land, some plucky earth men persuade them to move on when something common on Earth turns out to be poison to them. Astonishingly purple prose, which made me giggle out loud at times because it was so overwrought. Here’s a sample:

It was beyond all reason — all possibility! And yet — it was! Now I could see them clearly, rank on rank of them in orderly file, some hundred of them, strewn in great concentric rings about the softly glowing spheres — harsh as the black rock itself, hard, and glittering, and angular — a man’s height and more from summit to base — great, glittering tetrahedra — tetrahedra of terror!

Unfortunately, also a very racist story 🙁 I kept trying to give it a pass coz I was enjoying the main plot, but it kept getting worse – there’s a nasty subplot to do with a South American native/Portuguese “breed” on the “wrong side” (i.e. his mother was white). However, in contrast to Meek’s stories I feel that it could be edited to remove the racist attitudes & the racist subplot and at the end you’d have a story where the essential plot was the same, just stripped of the 1930’s unpleasantness. (The science would still mark it out as from that time period, mind you …).

“The World of the Red Sun” Clifford D. Simak

Time travel in the style of H. G. Wells – with a well thought out machine that has believable flaws. Plucky 20th Century men save the world of the far future! Given how thought through the time machine was it was startling that the men of the far future still spoke English. An enjoyable story.

1932

“Tumithak of the Corridors” Charles R. Tanner

Far future Earth, long post-invasion by Venusians & the start of the story of how people won back their planet. The framing story is that this is a reconstruction of “how it must’ve been” told from even further in the future. This is one of the stories that had stuck in my mind from reading this book when I was a teenager and I think I like it just as much as an adult – caveats about 1930s story telling styles still apply, tho, and I can’t exactly call it non-sexist or non-racist. It does actually have a couple of women with speaking parts who have about as much personality as the male secondary characters – but that means pretty much none. No overt racism & even an explicit statement that people come in many sorts, good & bad, regardless of nation or era – but everyone’s white except the savages who live in the dark (who are slate-coloured) which is somewhat problematic. Well thought through consequences of the living arrangements of the people, tho the science/arts divide made me roll my eyes a little. My favourite of this volume.

“The Moon Era” Jack Williamson

Another man in a machine goes on an adventure story – this time the machine is invented by an old wealthy childless man who summons his never met before impoverished nephew and announces that if he takes the trip in the machine he will inherit the fortune. The trip is supposed to be to the Moon & back, and indeed he goes to the Moon but the time he arrives is not the time he left the Earth. The alien he meets is female – has to be for the plot to work, but she’s no plot coupon she has a personality of her own. A melancholy story, which I liked although I didn’t quite buy the ending.

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“Gridlinked” Neal Asher

Next up on the shelf is somewhat of a contrast to the previous one, and bought probably about 10 years ago or so. Again with plans to buy the rest, and I think I did read some from the library although I never got round to buying more. A more positive re-reading experience it has to be said 🙂

Asher’s Polity series are set a few hundred years in the future when humans have colonised many different worlds, with the help of teleportation devices called runcibles. There are lots of AIs – some run the runcibles, some run ships, some run cities, some run planets, they’re pretty ubiquitous. And you can be linked into the network to interact directly with these AI (only as a government agent, I think) – which is called being gridlinked. As well as being space opera, I think of this book as having some of the same flavour as William Gibson’s earlier stuff – only it’s cyberpunk of the 2000s not cyberpunk of the 1980s.

It starts with something I always think of as a Stephen King trick (tho I’m sure lots of other writers use it) – you’re in the head of someone & just getting to know them & their story and then they’re dead. This is the set-up for the whole story, someone goes through a runcible and it goes wrong, the resulting release of energy is sufficient to blow up the runcible and most of the people on the planet and those who survive are frozen when the terraforming stops happening (it was being fuelled by waste heat from the runcible operations). Sabotage is suspected and one of the best Polity agents, Cormac, is called in to figure it out. As an added complication for him he’s been gridlinked for 30 years and this has started to atrophy his ability to interact with and empathise with people. So his superiors not only call him in but also tell him he needs to deactivate his gridlinking before taking on the job (otherwise he can retire – I think it wasn’t a threat as much as an acknowledgement that he wasn’t fit for duty any more, his retirement wouldn’t be a hardship, but he likes his job). As yet another complication he’s managed to piss off someone in his last job, who turns out to be more than a little psychotic and follows him across the galaxy to kill him.

Like I said at the start, I enjoyed reading this although I did find the ending a bit hard to follow. I wasn’t really sure what happened, but while writing this post I looked on wikipedia and found a link to an alternative version of the ending on Asher’s website where it’s more spelt out. Having read that I think I can see how all the clues were there, but I do think the original ending is too opaque – much better with a little more explanation.

I liked the way you get to see Cormac from the outside first, which shows how oddly he’s coming over to normal people before you see inside his head. And I liked the way that once we’re inside his head gridlinked-Cormac feels right for what it’d be like to have the internet (and more) in your head, for instance he looks at something and automatically looks up info on it. I wasn’t sure I agreed about what the side-effects of being gridlinked for 30 years would be, but then the withdrawal difficulties that Cormac has made it feel right.

The science in the book was explained just enough for me to hang my suspension of disbelief on, but not enough that I started picking holes in it (of course, not being a physicist helps with this…). The little bits at the start of each chapter were neat – some gave you little bits of useful info about the world of the story and some added another layer to it. Like one tells you about Cormac’s superior and it seems somewhat fantastical and they say he’s probably legendary. But then another one tells you about Cormac and how he’s a legend used to frighten potential Separatist terrorists into behaving … and yet we know he’s “real” coz we’re in his head, so how much of the other stuff about his superior is also real? I can’t remember much about later books, so I don’t know how much of that we get to find out about.

So I’m keeping this one 🙂 Might pick up some of the others, although perhaps not immediately (I know I want to get the rest of the Erikson series & we’re behind on the Wheel of Time, so I think perhaps buying even more books right now is not the best idea!).

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Prometheus

We went to see Prometheus at the cinema ages ago, but I’m reminded of it again because the blu-ray J bought has just arrived & J spent a large chunk of the weekend watching the extras & commentaries (as well as re-watching the film). I’ve seen quite a few people in various places online saying how crap the film was, but to be honest I completely disagree with that. I suppose I should point out that I see very few films, so perhaps I’m just not as jaded as the general cinema-going population. Also I haven’t actually seen the Aliens films (although I’m aware of the plots of them and have seen clips/bits over J’s shoulder, and have read some of the spin-off & tie-in novels). Even above & beyond my general dislike of narrative entertainment in visual form I’m particularly not keen on seeing gruesome things so sci-fi horror isn’t really my thing. But that does mean I didn’t go into watching Prometheus expecting it to be another instalment in a franchise that was dear to me (like I think a lot of people did) – so I didn’t have to reset my expectations to the reality of the film. Although that did also mean I spent more of it watching from behind my hands than I’d expected, coz J had said in advance he didn’t think it’d be that gory 😉 But equally I think the real reason I liked it better than other people I’ve seen comment on it is likely to boil down to it being my sort of story & not theirs, and that’s perfectly reasonable.

SPOILERS AHEAD! Hover over text to read, or read on entry page:

This isn’t a review, it’s more a collection of thoughts & impressions. And the main thing that’s stuck with me about the film is the ideas & the characters, rather than the action plot. I mean, you need the action plot, it’s what you’re watching and it wouldn’t work without it. But it’s the underpinnings that I found interesting & that J & I talked about afterwards (and again now that he’s got the blu-ray). I also like that you don’t actually get answers, you get hints & questions & possibilities and I think that makes it stronger. To take some recent examples (of things I haven’t seen but have read about) – the modern Battlestar Galactica & Lost both had a series long mystery plot of sorts, and then when people found out what was actually in the creator’s head it was disappointing. The questions had been more interesting than actually being given the answers. So I think the fact that the film doesn’t tell us much about the origins of human and Alien life in this universe is actually a good thing.

I didn’t think the whole thing was the most perfectest film ever, though – I do have criticisms and one part of the premise that I have to handwave my way right past. One major criticism is that I don’t think the film did a particularly good job of establishing Elizabeth Shaw as the character they intended and that weakened the first half of the film for me when I saw it in the cinema. Afterwards I read some stuff & watched a viral trailer snippet that made it clear that she had several doctorates and was trained in more than one field. That meant that the fact that she’s equally at home in an archaeological dig & a biology lab is actually because she is supposed to be a genius and polymath. And not sloppy writing on the part of writers who are making her do “all that science stuff” in the services of plot with no regards to how plausible it would be. I think it would’ve strengthened the film if there’d been some reference to her genius, something like a throwaway line about her multiple doctorates in the bit where she’s introduced to the crew of the ship.

The opening sequence is the bit that I need to resolutely put my own interpretation on and ignore textual hints that something else is intended 😉 In my personal version the Engineer is seeding the whole of life on Earth – I refuse to see the lichen or other greenery visible on those rocks. This is because as a biologist I’m far too aware that we’re very closely related to the other life on the planet to be a creation that’s seperate to the rest of the biology of earth. So that Engineer is seeding the original DNA molecules that become the whole of the planetary ecosystem, not just intelligent life. I also file under “movie science, no relation to real science” the bit where they compare the DNA of the Engineer head to human DNA and it comes up as a complete match, if you actually stop and think about it that’s ludicrous. My DNA is different from your DNA is different from any other given human’s DNA so a total match only happens with identical twins. So why would a big blue guy who isn’t and doesn’t even look human 100% match whatever their human DNA sample was? So I just accept the point they’re trying to make here (the Engineers are related to us in some fashion) and skip past the inconsistencies both with any sensible reality & with the way I’ve had to handwave the opening premise. It’s got an emotionally right point, even if it’s not actually right (truthy rather than true) and sometimes that’s just the way you need to tell the story.

Something I’ve been paying attention to recently when I’m reading or watching fiction is mirroring. The most obvious example here is David and his relation to his creators which is juxtaposed the whole way through with the humans and their relationship with & desire to know their creators. He has what the humans are looking for – he knows his creators, he knows why he was created and how banal those reasons really are (because we could, because we wanted a better servant, because Weyland didn’t have a son). And all those humans (except Shaw) treat him as something beneath them, to be ordered around, practically as furniture. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that on a couple of occasions he’s addressed as “Boy” by the crew when they’re giving him orders, I think that’s supposed to set up mental resonances with slavery in the US. Only in this case it’s “OK” because he’s only a robot after all. And yet Weyland has put together this trip to try and meet his creators, expecting welcome and to be treated as an equal. Shaw & Holloway’s motivations are a lot less mercenary, and Shaw’s attitude towards David is a lot less callous, but they are still expecting more from their own creators than their species gives to its own creations.

David and Vickers provide another set of contrasting mirrors. Weyland in his pre-recorded welcome speech manages in a single sentence to twist the knife in both of them – neither will ever be good enough in ways they cannot change. “David is the closest thing I have to a son”. Except David is not a real boy, he’s always a robot first and foremost. And Vickers is his daughter, and that’s even worse than a robot when it comes to Weyland’s dynastic ambitions. And you can see how that’s eaten away at both of them – Vickers in the scene where she ends up telling Weyland that all Kings die, that’s the natural order of things. It’s even more obvious in the longer version of that scene in the deleted scenes & extras part of the blu-ray, she still loves him and wants his approval whilst knowing it will never happen and wanting him dead. And David with his line near the end about “Doesn’t everyone want their parents dead?”. When I saw the film at the cinema I spent a lot of it wondering if Vickers would turn out to be a robot, but it’s actually that her facade and David’s facade come partly from the same place. The line that David repeats from Lawrence of Arabia is telling: “Certainly it hurts. […] The trick […] is not minding that it hurts.” I think if she’d turned out to be a robot that would actually have undermined that whole strand of the film, and detracted from the question of is he a person or not. Shaw clearly thinks so, she treats him as another person – I think she’s the only one we see thanking David for the things he does, and he clearly appreciates that from the way he interacts with her.

As an aside – writing this it’s interesting that I fall into the same way of singling out David as the people in the story. I’m using surnames for the human characters, but referring to David by his first name. By necessity, as he doesn’t seem to have a surname. But I suspect that’s deliberate, and it means that even writing about the film you end up singling out David as lower status than the rest of the named characters.

Shaw and Weyland are interestingly juxtaposed too. These are both very intelligent driven individuals in a class of their own, but you only have to look at that scene where they’re waking the Engineer and trying to ask him questions to see the differences between them. Weyland’s are all about himself – what can they do for him, can they make him young, can they stop him dying. Shaw’s are really on behalf of all humanity – why did you create us, why did you change your minds, what is the purpose of all this.

Shaw & Vickers too make a pair – until Weyland is woken up the two people in charge on that ship are those two women. The scene where Vickers exerts her authority early on is amusing because Holloway is there blustering away about “do you have some hidden agenda?”, but the real face-off is between Vickers and Shaw and they look pretty evenly matched. They’re also both determined and tough women who do what needs to be done – Vickers kills Holloway to prevent him getting back on the ship because of his infection and the risks to herself & the rest of the people, Shaw cuts an alien baby out of her stomach and then goes down to the planet to see the awakened Engineer because it’s what needs to be done. But Shaw again is more sympathetic & Vickers is driven by more selfish motivations. Oh, and they both run away the wrong way from the falling spaceship in their panic – Shaw is saved effectively by a miracle, she trips and manages to roll her way to a rock that breaks the fall of the ship just enough that she isn’t crushed. If she hadn’t fallen she’d probably still’ve been running along the long axis of its fall when it hit the ground.

And those questions of Shaw’s are referenced again at the end – David asks if it really matters why, and Shaw says that of course it does, and that’s part the fundamental difference between humans and robots like David. Ridley Scott says in his commentary that that’s an essential truth about David – he’s intensely curious but about how things work, what things are. And that drives a lot of what he does through the plot – the obvious example is that he infects Holloway to find out what will happen, and asks his permission first (and manipulates him into giving it unknowing). But he doesn’t much care about why. It is what it is, that’s all that’s interesting. And that’s actually a fairly alien mindset to us – I mean a fair amount of thought from humanity goes into big questions like “why are we here?”, “what’s the purpose of life?”. Shaw is admirable because she cares more about that than Weyland’s selfish questions. So David is pretty different from a human, despite being “made in our image” … and yet the characters in the film don’t really seem to expect that their own creators might be just as alien.

They also expect the aliens, the Engineers, to be a monolithic culture. But why? The group of them that goes off in this ship does so for all sorts of reasons – Weyland to get immortal life, Shaw & Holloway to find out where humanity came from, Vickers to make sure she knows what happens to dear old Dad (and make sure he’s dead), the geologist for a pay-cheque, the xenobiologist coz he’s a real geek about alien lifeforms and he’d love to see some in the flesh. They’re not a monolith, they’re people. And so are the Engineers – the one we see at the beginning sacrifices himself to bring life to the world, the one we see at the end destroys David & the humans he can reach without a second thought. This doesn’t necessarily show that the culture changed their minds (tho given the timescale it also could be that), it could just be that some factions go and seed life through the galaxy for a variety of personal reasons but some factions regard this as an abomination for an equal variety of personal reasons.

I feel like I’ve been writing for ages but still only scratched at the surface of the things I want to say. But I think if I carry on it’ll turn into a rambling mess (or more so), so I shall stop here 🙂 It’s a film that I thought had all sorts of interesting ideas just below the surface of the action-oriented plot.