If giant alien ships randomly showed up in 29 major cities across the globe bearing this message, would you believe them? That's the catchphrase for Anna, the Visitor high commander in the new ABC series V.
What makes the show great is that there are mixed reactions to the Visitors (as the aliens like to be called). People don't just bow down and worship the V's (well, some do), and they don't let them just take control of everything (like in Childhood's End). Most people in the show are pro-V, because they don't seem to do anything bad, and actually promise universal health care and all kinds of cool alien technologies. Others, like Father Jack Landry are skeptical of the V's. Father Jack is a member of the Fifth Column, a resistance group that knows the true nature of the V's: they are actually reptilian underneath a "human skin." Even though the V's plan isn't revealed (they have some vague and scary plan the whole time), it is clear to the viewer that they are evil. In the beginning, they lied about their true nature when Anna said their scientists can explain why they look exactly like humans, and then FBI agent Erica Evans found out someone she thought she knew and trusted was actually a V. It shows that they have infiltrated all walks of life and that anyone could be a V.
That's half the fun of the show: trying to figure out who is a V. After their true nature is revealed, Father Jack cautions people against jumping on the V bandwagon in his homilies, much to the chagrin of the other priest at the church. That priest is so blindly pro-V that I'm convinced he is one of them. The other half of the fun of the show is all the big reveals and twists that they have. The show is so quick and action packed, and then at the end of every episode someone says something like "We have to tell Tyler the truth about his parents" and it leaves me begging for more. Many times while watching the preview, they'll say "Next week, on V:" and at the end of the preview I shout "I CAN'T WAIT THAT LONG!"
Aside from cheap tricks like plot twists at the end of every episode, the show doesn't drag it's feet in the middle. There are a lot of characters, and there is a lot going on in each episode. The Fifth Column members are always looking for ways to help them fight the V's and convince the rest of humanity that they are being lied to, and there are many scenes with Anna and Marcus (her second in command) plotting and scheming up on the ship. What I like about the scenes where Anna and Marcus is that they have a special camera angle they use just for when they are plotting something.
The show is also very character-driven. Erica leads the Fifth Column, while her son Tyler gets closer to a Visitor named Lisa. Lisa frequently brings him to Anna (the high commander), and Tyler becomes very pro-V. Obviously, this leads to some tensions between him and his mother, but they manage to have some kind of relationship just the same. This is just one example of the character driven nature of the show, but suffice to say that none of the characters are the same at the end of the season.
I could go on and on and on about how great V is, but I might end up ruining the whole show by just giving a synopsis of it. You'll just have to buy the DVD on Tuesday when it comes out.
V on amazon.com
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Friday, October 29, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Star Wars: What happens after Return of the Jedi?
That was probably the biggest question at the end of Return of the Jedi: What happens next? The Rebel Alliance just killed the Emperor, and the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Navy, now what? It's a question that went unanswered until the early 1990's when Timothy Zahn answered it in the Thrawn Trilogy.
Like all good Star Wars stories, this one is told in three parts: Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising and The Last Command. The story pick up five years after the Battle of Endor (the battle at the end of the Return of the Jedi). We find Leia and Han are married, and expecting twins (to be named Justin and Joe), Luke is a powerful Jedi now, and he is training Leia. Chewbacca still hangs out with Han, and R2 and 3PO are there too. The Rebel Alliance has now become the New Republic, which is modeled closely after the Old Republic (that fell so easily to the Sith in the prequel trilogy). The problem they run into is that the Empire may be impossible to defeat completely. An obscure Grand Admiral named Thrawn has taken command of what is left of the Empire, and is a tactical genius. His plan is to reconquer the Galaxy, a little at a time. The first problem the Empire runs into is not a lack of loyalty, but a lack of supplies, so Thrawn plans to attack the Sluis Van shipyards in order to get ships for his fight (and it sets up a cool space battle at the end).
The second book, Dark Force Rising is my favorite of the three, just like Empire Strikes Back is the best of the Original Trilogy and Attack of the Clones is the best of the prequel trilogy (if you know how to watch it). This time, Thrawn's scheme is to find the lost Katana fleet. The Katana fleet is a huge fleet of early star destroyers from the Clone Wars that disappeared. It is an interesting mystery story that also results in an awesome space battle.
Book three is also very good, it is about Thrawns desperate attempt to build a clone army at the Emperor's old cloning facility, Mount Tantiss. C'Boath also escalates his search for the Jedi twins, and it results in the only lightsaber duel of the series.
What makes these books so interesting for a hard-core Star Wars fan is the depth they add to the mythology. Take this for example: Thrawn knows that the Emperor used the Force to "motivate" the troops in the Empire, and when he died during the Battle of Endor, they lost the will to win and were beaten more easily. That is why Thrawn enlists the crazed Jedi Master Joruus C'Boath to help him. C'Boath just asks for two things in return: Leia and Hans children, so he can train them and mold them into the more Dark Jedi like him. To protect himself from C'Boath's power, Thrawn gathers many Ysalimiri, a lizard-like creature that actually blocks the Force out of its area. A Jedi is powerless when they are about three feet away from an Ysalimiri, and C'Boath's Force lightning cannot enter the Force-free area around them.
This creature also proves useful in the Last Command when Thrawn is trying to make a new clone army. He found the Emperor's cloning facility at Mount Tantiss, and tried making new clones and growing them up really fast (infant to adult in five years), however that didn't work, since they broke down and went crazy from growing too fast. Thrawn's solution was to block out the Force during their development, and they wouldn't have the problems the first batch of clones had.
I liked how well Zahn seamlessly adds new characters and aliens to the existing Star Wars universe rather than recycling people and creatures we already know. He delves into the disorder in the smuggling world caused by Jabba the Hutt's death, and he adds the Noghri race. The Noghri are used by the Empire as assassins, and they have a really interesting backstory. I won't go into details here, you'll just have to read the books.
The series also gives some depth to the characters. We see (well, I see, because whenever I read a good book it's like I'm watching a movie of it in my head) Chewbacca's homeworld of Kashyyyk, Thrawn isn't just "generic Imperial Grand Admiral number 7." What is most interesting though is that Zahn spends a few pages on race within the Empire, noting that all the Grand Admirals were humans, yet Thrawn is not (he's a blue guy!).
Overall, this is a worthy successor to the Star Wars Original Trilogy. It offers all the thrills, action, bad guys turning into good guys and plenty of Lando Calrissian to boot. I really wish they would make these into a movie already.
Heir to the Empire
ISBN# 0-553-29612-4
Heir to the Empire on Amazon.com
Dark Force Rising
ISBN# 0-553-56071-9
Dark Force Rising on Amazon.com
The Last Command
ISBN# 0-553-56492-7
The Last Command on Amazon.com
Like all good Star Wars stories, this one is told in three parts: Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising and The Last Command. The story pick up five years after the Battle of Endor (the battle at the end of the Return of the Jedi). We find Leia and Han are married, and expecting twins (to be named Justin and Joe), Luke is a powerful Jedi now, and he is training Leia. Chewbacca still hangs out with Han, and R2 and 3PO are there too. The Rebel Alliance has now become the New Republic, which is modeled closely after the Old Republic (that fell so easily to the Sith in the prequel trilogy). The problem they run into is that the Empire may be impossible to defeat completely. An obscure Grand Admiral named Thrawn has taken command of what is left of the Empire, and is a tactical genius. His plan is to reconquer the Galaxy, a little at a time. The first problem the Empire runs into is not a lack of loyalty, but a lack of supplies, so Thrawn plans to attack the Sluis Van shipyards in order to get ships for his fight (and it sets up a cool space battle at the end).
The second book, Dark Force Rising is my favorite of the three, just like Empire Strikes Back is the best of the Original Trilogy and Attack of the Clones is the best of the prequel trilogy (if you know how to watch it). This time, Thrawn's scheme is to find the lost Katana fleet. The Katana fleet is a huge fleet of early star destroyers from the Clone Wars that disappeared. It is an interesting mystery story that also results in an awesome space battle.
Book three is also very good, it is about Thrawns desperate attempt to build a clone army at the Emperor's old cloning facility, Mount Tantiss. C'Boath also escalates his search for the Jedi twins, and it results in the only lightsaber duel of the series.
What makes these books so interesting for a hard-core Star Wars fan is the depth they add to the mythology. Take this for example: Thrawn knows that the Emperor used the Force to "motivate" the troops in the Empire, and when he died during the Battle of Endor, they lost the will to win and were beaten more easily. That is why Thrawn enlists the crazed Jedi Master Joruus C'Boath to help him. C'Boath just asks for two things in return: Leia and Hans children, so he can train them and mold them into the more Dark Jedi like him. To protect himself from C'Boath's power, Thrawn gathers many Ysalimiri, a lizard-like creature that actually blocks the Force out of its area. A Jedi is powerless when they are about three feet away from an Ysalimiri, and C'Boath's Force lightning cannot enter the Force-free area around them.
This creature also proves useful in the Last Command when Thrawn is trying to make a new clone army. He found the Emperor's cloning facility at Mount Tantiss, and tried making new clones and growing them up really fast (infant to adult in five years), however that didn't work, since they broke down and went crazy from growing too fast. Thrawn's solution was to block out the Force during their development, and they wouldn't have the problems the first batch of clones had.
I liked how well Zahn seamlessly adds new characters and aliens to the existing Star Wars universe rather than recycling people and creatures we already know. He delves into the disorder in the smuggling world caused by Jabba the Hutt's death, and he adds the Noghri race. The Noghri are used by the Empire as assassins, and they have a really interesting backstory. I won't go into details here, you'll just have to read the books.
The series also gives some depth to the characters. We see (well, I see, because whenever I read a good book it's like I'm watching a movie of it in my head) Chewbacca's homeworld of Kashyyyk, Thrawn isn't just "generic Imperial Grand Admiral number 7." What is most interesting though is that Zahn spends a few pages on race within the Empire, noting that all the Grand Admirals were humans, yet Thrawn is not (he's a blue guy!).
Overall, this is a worthy successor to the Star Wars Original Trilogy. It offers all the thrills, action, bad guys turning into good guys and plenty of Lando Calrissian to boot. I really wish they would make these into a movie already.
Heir to the Empire
ISBN# 0-553-29612-4
Heir to the Empire on Amazon.com
Dark Force Rising
ISBN# 0-553-56071-9
Dark Force Rising on Amazon.com
The Last Command
ISBN# 0-553-56492-7
The Last Command on Amazon.com
Friday, August 6, 2010
The Sirens of Titan: An elaborate plan to make everyone just be nice to each other
The Sirens of Titan is Kurt Vonnegut’s second novel, and it is very obvious from the start (at least to me) how much his writing style changed throughout his career. I’ve read Timequake and Breakfast of Champions though, so I know what ends up happening to his writing style. The Vonnegut style that I’m used to is short paragraphs that all seem to be about nothing, but tell a complete story over two to three hundred pages. They are full of random thoughts (especially in Breakfast of Champions) that are funny because they are usually not something you think about. Sirens is different in that Vonnegut was still a young author who probably felt he had to write like all the other authors. I had a hard time believing this actually was a Kurt Vonnegut book, but there were a few elements that convinced me it was. One of those elements was the character Winston Niles Rumfoord, who is a character I’m sure I’ve read about in another Vonnegut book (I don’t recall exactly where now, it just sounds really familiar), and the presence of the Tralfamadorians, our favorite aliens that were also featured in Slaughterhouse-Five.
Now that we know it’s an actual Vonnegut book, we can start looking beyond the story to see what it is all about. Rumfoord is one of the main characters, and he doesn’t seem like a protagonist or an antagonist in the book. He’s just the guy that makes everything happen. He travels around the solar system by materializing in regular intervals on different planets. He does this because he (and his dog Kazak) flew into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, and it turned them into some kind of wave. Whenever the Rumfood/Kazak wave intersects a planet, they materialize there. Somehow Rumfoord also gains the ability to see the future. So what does Rumfoord do with these cool powers? He stages an elaborate attack on Earth by Mars. There were no aliens on Mars, instead he has people kidnapped and taken to Mars to form an army to attack Earth later. The purpose of the attack is to unite everyone on Earth in a new religion called “The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.” The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent teaches that God created everything, and then stopped interfering altogether. Everyone is a victim of a series of accidents, and there isn’t much they can do about it.
The purpose Rumfoord has in creating this new religion is to take away any claims that God wants this or that. It asks the questions “Why would God single you out? Why does God like you more?” Obviously then this takes away all claims to leadership by divine right. Another implication of having a totally indifferent God is that there would never be any reason to pray. If God doesn’t care anyway, why bother asking him for things, or thanking him? He didn’t do anything for you besides creating you, so your thanks is wasted on him. The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent goes another step further in trying to eliminate random good luck by making people compensate for their strengths in negative ways: an attractive woman wears frumpy clothes, the local priest carries around 48-pound weights, the most attractive man marries a woman who is nauseated by sex. The purpose of that is to try and bring everyone to the same level and eliminate jealousy. It makes everyone easier to love I guess, which is the central point of the religion: just love each other, even though no one Up There really cares.
The book is very well written. Unlike Arthur C. Clarke, Vonnegut wastes no space on pointless exposition. The other two main characters life stories are very important to the conclusion of the book, Mars’ attack on Earth is the turning point of the book, and Unk’s time on Mercury is also important. At one point, it seems that the two main characters are forgotten, but they are not. I promise. This is a very linear story with a pretty important message, and even though it wasn’t as easy to read as other Kurt Vonnegut books, I still enjoyed it. I also have a new favorite quote from it:
The Sirens of Titan on Amazon.com
ISBN#: 0-440-17948-3
Now that we know it’s an actual Vonnegut book, we can start looking beyond the story to see what it is all about. Rumfoord is one of the main characters, and he doesn’t seem like a protagonist or an antagonist in the book. He’s just the guy that makes everything happen. He travels around the solar system by materializing in regular intervals on different planets. He does this because he (and his dog Kazak) flew into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, and it turned them into some kind of wave. Whenever the Rumfood/Kazak wave intersects a planet, they materialize there. Somehow Rumfoord also gains the ability to see the future. So what does Rumfoord do with these cool powers? He stages an elaborate attack on Earth by Mars. There were no aliens on Mars, instead he has people kidnapped and taken to Mars to form an army to attack Earth later. The purpose of the attack is to unite everyone on Earth in a new religion called “The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.” The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent teaches that God created everything, and then stopped interfering altogether. Everyone is a victim of a series of accidents, and there isn’t much they can do about it.
The purpose Rumfoord has in creating this new religion is to take away any claims that God wants this or that. It asks the questions “Why would God single you out? Why does God like you more?” Obviously then this takes away all claims to leadership by divine right. Another implication of having a totally indifferent God is that there would never be any reason to pray. If God doesn’t care anyway, why bother asking him for things, or thanking him? He didn’t do anything for you besides creating you, so your thanks is wasted on him. The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent goes another step further in trying to eliminate random good luck by making people compensate for their strengths in negative ways: an attractive woman wears frumpy clothes, the local priest carries around 48-pound weights, the most attractive man marries a woman who is nauseated by sex. The purpose of that is to try and bring everyone to the same level and eliminate jealousy. It makes everyone easier to love I guess, which is the central point of the religion: just love each other, even though no one Up There really cares.
The book is very well written. Unlike Arthur C. Clarke, Vonnegut wastes no space on pointless exposition. The other two main characters life stories are very important to the conclusion of the book, Mars’ attack on Earth is the turning point of the book, and Unk’s time on Mercury is also important. At one point, it seems that the two main characters are forgotten, but they are not. I promise. This is a very linear story with a pretty important message, and even though it wasn’t as easy to read as other Kurt Vonnegut books, I still enjoyed it. I also have a new favorite quote from it:
“it took us that long to realize that a purpose of a human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
The Sirens of Titan on Amazon.com
ISBN#: 0-440-17948-3
Monday, August 2, 2010
Way of the Wolf (and the Vampire Earth Series)
Way of the Wolf is the first of an ongoing series called Vampire Earth, which is currently on its 8th book. The series takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where the Earth has been taken over by an alien race called the Kurians. They have taken over the planet, except for a pockets of resistance spread throughout the world and concentrated in the Ozark Free Territory--the area west of the Mississippi. The plot follows David Valentine, one of those freedom fighters.
There are also beings called Lifeweavers who have taken the side of the humans, and they are able to impart certain powers on humans who are capable of possessing them. There are four branches of service in the militia known as Southern Command: Guards, Wolves, Cats, and Bears. Each branch except guards has certain advanced abilities given to them by the Lifeweavers (senses for wolves, reflexes and balance for cats, and strength and berserker rage for bears).
David Valentine is a resourceful Wolf Lieutenant who readers quickly come to like. He's a Minnesota boy, which gets me rooting for the home team right off the bat. He was raised by a priest after the Kurians killed his parents, and he went into Southern Command to protect others from similar experiences. Though in this book he's a new Wolf, he shows a lot of promise, and seems to be a natural leader. His ability to sense Reapers, the life-sucking minions of the Kurians, also gives him an edge.
In this book, he is separated from his unit when he goes out on a covert operation into Kurian-controlled Wisconsin. He finds himself posing a Kurian supporter while caring for a badly wounded comrade in secret. With the help of a Wisconsin farming family named the Carlsons, he is able to hide his friend, and maintain his cover. But when the family that has been so gracious to him is in danger, he finds it impossible to just stand by and watch.
I loved this book, and the entire series after it. EE Knight's writing is superb, and every story is so gripping I read it in just a few days. I have recomended this book to two other friends and they both love it just as much as I do. This book is unlike anything I've ever read before. Knight places you in a dark future, but with a character who won't allow that darkness to get through to the reader. It speaks volumes about the indomitable human spirit, and our will to fight and survive no matter how bad things get.
Every book of this series is excellent, but I have to warn you of its one drawback: after book 2, (Choice of the Cat), the books no longer have endings which will allow you to stop reading the series. While they do wrap up almost everything that happens in the book, they don't leave you satisfied. You will always think to yourself, "I need the next book RIGHT NOW!" or "I have to find out what happens next!" Even at book eight, there is no end in sight for the series as of yet. So unless you're in it for the long haul, you better just quit after Choice of the Cat. If you can, that is.
ISBN# 0-451-45973-3
Way of the Wolf on Amazon.com
There are also beings called Lifeweavers who have taken the side of the humans, and they are able to impart certain powers on humans who are capable of possessing them. There are four branches of service in the militia known as Southern Command: Guards, Wolves, Cats, and Bears. Each branch except guards has certain advanced abilities given to them by the Lifeweavers (senses for wolves, reflexes and balance for cats, and strength and berserker rage for bears).
David Valentine is a resourceful Wolf Lieutenant who readers quickly come to like. He's a Minnesota boy, which gets me rooting for the home team right off the bat. He was raised by a priest after the Kurians killed his parents, and he went into Southern Command to protect others from similar experiences. Though in this book he's a new Wolf, he shows a lot of promise, and seems to be a natural leader. His ability to sense Reapers, the life-sucking minions of the Kurians, also gives him an edge.
In this book, he is separated from his unit when he goes out on a covert operation into Kurian-controlled Wisconsin. He finds himself posing a Kurian supporter while caring for a badly wounded comrade in secret. With the help of a Wisconsin farming family named the Carlsons, he is able to hide his friend, and maintain his cover. But when the family that has been so gracious to him is in danger, he finds it impossible to just stand by and watch.
I loved this book, and the entire series after it. EE Knight's writing is superb, and every story is so gripping I read it in just a few days. I have recomended this book to two other friends and they both love it just as much as I do. This book is unlike anything I've ever read before. Knight places you in a dark future, but with a character who won't allow that darkness to get through to the reader. It speaks volumes about the indomitable human spirit, and our will to fight and survive no matter how bad things get.
Every book of this series is excellent, but I have to warn you of its one drawback: after book 2, (Choice of the Cat), the books no longer have endings which will allow you to stop reading the series. While they do wrap up almost everything that happens in the book, they don't leave you satisfied. You will always think to yourself, "I need the next book RIGHT NOW!" or "I have to find out what happens next!" Even at book eight, there is no end in sight for the series as of yet. So unless you're in it for the long haul, you better just quit after Choice of the Cat. If you can, that is.
ISBN# 0-451-45973-3
Way of the Wolf on Amazon.com
Friday, July 30, 2010
Free Will! Free Will! The Rerun is over!
Those are the words of the old, out-of-print science fiction author Kilgore Trout, right at the end of the ten year rerun that is the basis for the book Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut.
The premise of Timequake is that the Universe got bored with expanding all the time. “What is the point?” It asked itself. So it stopped expanding, and contracted for a while. On Earth, everyone is flashed back to a point 10 years earlier, and are forced to relive the previous 10 years of their lives. They make the same bad decisions, they do all the exact same things, and can’t help it. They have all their memories of the last 10 years, so they know what is coming. This results in everyone going on what Trout calls “autopilot,” since everyone knows what is coming next, they don’t have to think about it.
For me, this would be a combination of a great time and torture. Like everyone else (I’m sure), I’ve done a lot of things that I’m embarrassed about, but the last 10 years for me include college, high school and seventh and eighth grade. Some good times and some bad; I won’t get into it here.
Early on in the book, Vonnegut writes a little bit about his opinion on TV. He says that it was ok a long time ago, when there were very few shows and people would get out and discuss them, but it expanded to the point where nobody is watching the same thing and nobody talks to other people.
I didn’t catch this while reading the book, but after I read it (and the more I thought about it), Vonnegut uses the timequake as an allegory for TV. The previous 10 years of everyone’s life is like a bad TV show they are re-watching. People realize that they can’t do anything about it, so they all just stop thinking. Studies have shown that there is less brain activity in someone who is watching TV than someone who is sleeping, and Vonnegut shows people forgot how to think during the timequake. As soon as the rerun ends (the Universe expands back to where it was), everyone who was standing on one leg when the timequake hit falls over. This is pretty common because many people were mid-stride while walking around. He even gives an example of a man who was driving a truck, and when the rerun ended, he crashed into a building because he didn’t realize he had to think about what he was doing.
This book gives me chills because of how reflective of our society it actually is. I have a pretty extreme example, but I think it’s exactly what Vonnegut was getting at. I lived with a guy whose drivers license said he weighed 290 pounds, but he had to have weighed closer to 350 or maybe even more than that. The reason for his weight was that he sat on the couch for thirteen (I wrote it out so you’d know it’s not a typo) thirteen hours every day. He set his alarm for 9:30 AM, so he could waddle over to the living room and channel surf all day long. He did leave the apartment to go to class, work, and broomball; but those are the only reasons he left. Occasionally, my other roommates and I would use the living room while he was in class, and when he got back and found the TV in use, he had no idea what to do with himself. He had become dependent on TV.
This of course is an extreme example, but it is not uncommon for people not to know what to do without TV’s or computers. When I went to my grandparent’s cabin last weekend, I brought a few good books to read in case it rained, and I spent the entire time outside exploring the woods, swimming, or having a fire; not being anti-social in front of a screen the entire time.
This book is similar to Fahrenheit 451 in that it is heavily critical of TV, and it shows how people are thinking less because the TV is doing it for them. People don't know how to entertain themselves, they don't know how to interact, because there's no need: We have TV instead.
Timequake on Amazon.com
ISBN # 0425164349
The premise of Timequake is that the Universe got bored with expanding all the time. “What is the point?” It asked itself. So it stopped expanding, and contracted for a while. On Earth, everyone is flashed back to a point 10 years earlier, and are forced to relive the previous 10 years of their lives. They make the same bad decisions, they do all the exact same things, and can’t help it. They have all their memories of the last 10 years, so they know what is coming. This results in everyone going on what Trout calls “autopilot,” since everyone knows what is coming next, they don’t have to think about it.
For me, this would be a combination of a great time and torture. Like everyone else (I’m sure), I’ve done a lot of things that I’m embarrassed about, but the last 10 years for me include college, high school and seventh and eighth grade. Some good times and some bad; I won’t get into it here.
Early on in the book, Vonnegut writes a little bit about his opinion on TV. He says that it was ok a long time ago, when there were very few shows and people would get out and discuss them, but it expanded to the point where nobody is watching the same thing and nobody talks to other people.
I didn’t catch this while reading the book, but after I read it (and the more I thought about it), Vonnegut uses the timequake as an allegory for TV. The previous 10 years of everyone’s life is like a bad TV show they are re-watching. People realize that they can’t do anything about it, so they all just stop thinking. Studies have shown that there is less brain activity in someone who is watching TV than someone who is sleeping, and Vonnegut shows people forgot how to think during the timequake. As soon as the rerun ends (the Universe expands back to where it was), everyone who was standing on one leg when the timequake hit falls over. This is pretty common because many people were mid-stride while walking around. He even gives an example of a man who was driving a truck, and when the rerun ended, he crashed into a building because he didn’t realize he had to think about what he was doing.
This book gives me chills because of how reflective of our society it actually is. I have a pretty extreme example, but I think it’s exactly what Vonnegut was getting at. I lived with a guy whose drivers license said he weighed 290 pounds, but he had to have weighed closer to 350 or maybe even more than that. The reason for his weight was that he sat on the couch for thirteen (I wrote it out so you’d know it’s not a typo) thirteen hours every day. He set his alarm for 9:30 AM, so he could waddle over to the living room and channel surf all day long. He did leave the apartment to go to class, work, and broomball; but those are the only reasons he left. Occasionally, my other roommates and I would use the living room while he was in class, and when he got back and found the TV in use, he had no idea what to do with himself. He had become dependent on TV.
This of course is an extreme example, but it is not uncommon for people not to know what to do without TV’s or computers. When I went to my grandparent’s cabin last weekend, I brought a few good books to read in case it rained, and I spent the entire time outside exploring the woods, swimming, or having a fire; not being anti-social in front of a screen the entire time.
This book is similar to Fahrenheit 451 in that it is heavily critical of TV, and it shows how people are thinking less because the TV is doing it for them. People don't know how to entertain themselves, they don't know how to interact, because there's no need: We have TV instead.
Timequake on Amazon.com
ISBN # 0425164349
Friday, July 2, 2010
Independence Day
Independence Day is one of Roland Emmerich’s “disaster movies,” it’s a series of non-connected films he made that all focus on one huge disaster. He’s the guy that made Independence Day (alien attack), The Day After Tomorrow (global warming), Eight Legged Freaks (giant spiders!), 10,000 BC (ok it’s not a disaster movie but it was still bad) and 2012 (the end of the world). The Day After Tomorrow was terrible, and I didn’t even bother seeing 2012, since it looked bad and I despise anything that makes people believe the world might end in 2012 (as an amateur Astronomer, I cringe whenever someone brings up galactic center alignments or near-Earth asteroids that are coming our way). Independence Day stands out from those, because it is a much, much better movie. What makes it so great is that Emmerich can take any guess he wants about the human reaction to aliens visiting Earth, and I believe he makes the correct guess when he shows hundreds of people gathered in the streets welcoming the aliens (I know I would be out there with a big welcome sign). He also guesses correctly that we would fight back when we are attacked, or when the aliens try and force us to do things; unlike Arthur C. Clarke, who assumes humans have no willpower and will just obey some alien they can’t see (I have a review of Childhood’s End coming up in two weeks, you’ll hear all about this).
The best thing about Independence Day is that it’s just a fun movie you don’t have to think much about. Some of the best sci-fi plots are the simplest: robot from the future wants to kill Sarah Connor, so it shows how she survives; alien monster is running amok on the ship, so let’s see how Ripley and the cat survive, giant alien spaceship attacking Earth, how do we fight back? etc. Some movies with more complex plots that develop their own lore can be really good (i.e.: Star Wars), but if they over-think it, the movie/series suffers or even loses some of its depth (i.e.: 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Watch for a post about that in January).
Overall, Independence Day delivers on the action, aliens and Will Smith. I might find time this Fourth of July to re-watch it, even though I’ll be in the Middle of Nowhere Wisconsin at the fiancée’s cabin.
Independence Day at bestbuy.com
The best thing about Independence Day is that it’s just a fun movie you don’t have to think much about. Some of the best sci-fi plots are the simplest: robot from the future wants to kill Sarah Connor, so it shows how she survives; alien monster is running amok on the ship, so let’s see how Ripley and the cat survive, giant alien spaceship attacking Earth, how do we fight back? etc. Some movies with more complex plots that develop their own lore can be really good (i.e.: Star Wars), but if they over-think it, the movie/series suffers or even loses some of its depth (i.e.: 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Watch for a post about that in January).
Overall, Independence Day delivers on the action, aliens and Will Smith. I might find time this Fourth of July to re-watch it, even though I’ll be in the Middle of Nowhere Wisconsin at the fiancée’s cabin.
Independence Day at bestbuy.com
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