1. Warn people not to see it
2. Share something positive

So first of all don’t watch it. It was awful. There was a plague or something where people got turned into dirty, oozing elephant men. Then there were some zombie monks and a witchy demon thing. So probably not Sci-Fi since it is supposed to take place in the 14th century, but it was bad, and it is kind of the anti-sci-fi, positing that religious stuff is responsible for what we now believe to be scientific stuff.

Whatever.

The sword stuff wasn’t even that good. If you do fail to heed my warning, please just turn it off as soon as they kill the bad guy. The ending voiceover was so terrible that it is entirely possible that the movie was phenomenal, but the voiceover destroyed everything that may have been good, and then drowned some kittens just for fun afterwards. Some people just don’t know when to be quiet.

My soul feels slightly cleaner.

Now to purge the remnants of the soul taint and restore some balance to the world, I am sharing a simple but good recipe for mushroom gravy. Note this recipe is for people who actually cook things (i.e. if you use measuring cups/spoons stop reading now and go order some take-out – I don’t say this to be mean, I just have no measurements to offer and hate it when people cry in the kitchen).

Vegetarian Mushroom Gravy

You will need:

• mushrooms (your choice of type, feel free to mix and match)
• shallots
• butter (or olive oil if you are vegan)
• white cooking wine, or whatever substitute you like (beer, broth, water, etc… just not red wine: it makes the gravy an unpleasant gray purple color, but still tastes fine)
• dried mushrooms
• thickening agent (I just use whatever flour I have at hand and last time it was cornmeal, which worked fine).
• salt
• pepper

1. Sautee shallots in butter, enjoy the aroma. This is the most heavenly smell, and will make you feel warm and cozy. Enjoy it.
2. When shallots are sort of translucent, add in mushrooms (chopped to your preferred size). I usually cut in half and slice, but chopping or using a food processor probably does the trick too. Add in some salt and pepper and any other seasoning you like.
3. Cook until they look cooked, add in some dried mushrooms (break them up by hand a little) and a little liquid.
4. Mix the thickener with some more of the liquid. Add slowly to cooking mushrooms and continue to cook until the liquid has reduced to your liking.
5. Eat. Tasty on mashed potatos. Goes well with a viewing of “Troll Hunter“

Don’t ask me questions about the recipe – unless you burn something, it is pretty damn hard to mess up, like Norwegian movies about Trolls.
And remember, DON’T WATCH SEASON OF THE WITCH.

Extra chunky peanut butter on a hamburger?

Well, the answer was: win. most. delicious. sandwich. ever.
Sorry Kung Pao Chicken, you are no longer the best meat and nut combo in my mouth ever.

I understand that most of you, dear readers, are possibly not in agreement.
In fact, even if you like both peanut butter (I refer only to extra crunchy or chunky, never creamy) and hamburgers, you most likely can taste a little bit of bile in the back of your throat and are thinking something like… “that is so gross on so many levels and I hate that you introduced the concept of combining meat and nuts into my once safe and happy world/mouth.“
However there is one of you who is intrigued.
And you will try it.
And you might just love it too.
[Hello Seattle!]

Sucker Punch, by Zack Snyder, is not my extra chunky peanut butter hamburger (His Dawn of the Dead remake might be though).
Actually I was taken to see it on opening night in Manhattan by Jeffrey, who indicated that I would like it since I enjoyed 300.

My vocal response when asked to go was “yes,” but my mental response went something like… “yes, but 300 had 300 half-naked menfolk prancing about doing manly things like killing wolves and fighting off the sexually ambiguous and multi-cultural bad guy from Stargate to prove their hetero-Caucasian manliness (which I found upsetting due to my love of any wolf-like creatures and Stargate, but could overlook due to the 300 half-naked hot man component) and Sucker Punch has half a dozen half-naked teenage girls prancing around doing manly things like killing dragons. And I like dragons, but not so much half-naked teenage girls…

In fact that combination (dragons and half-naked girls) is likely to give me hideous flashbacks to junior high gym class.“

But I saw it, with the 10 other totally amped opening-night moviegoers.
It was no extra chunky peanut butter hamburger.
But it wasn’t so bad.

It definitely didn’t elevate the art form. It was more of an extended music video. I liked the sound track and there was lots to look at. The plot was not as confusing or complicated as everyone keeps saying (movie reviewers might be kinda dumb if they didn’t get it). Plus Scott Glenn was in it and his voice is so dreamy. It is like the aural equivalent of extra chunky peanut butter, rough and smooth and it sticks in your head for a bit…

Anyway, the movie did attempt to combine Nazi steam-punk zombies, ninjas, dragons, and emo girls together in an ultra-melodrama with very little character development and the usual girl-power/misogyny that is de rigueur in most male directed movies featuring a young primarily female cast these days. It was the movie I imagine R Kelly would make if he was a white hipster.

That being said, I am certain that this is the movie equivalent of a creamy peanut butter hamburger, not quite right for me, but there is someone this movie is made for, and they will love it.

Obviously, this is a situation I need to rectify. After the jump is the lede from the Wikipedia article on cyberpunk and a list of cyberpunk books, movies and television shows.

Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre noted for its focus on “high tech and low life.” The name is a blend of cybernetics and punk and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story “Cyberpunk,” published in 1983. It features advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order. Cyberpunk works are well situated within postmodern literature.

Cyberpunk plots often center on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and megacorporations, and tend to be set in a near-future Earth, rather than the far-future settings or galactic vistas found in novels such as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation or Frank Herbert’s Dune. The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias, but tend to be marked by extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its creators (“the street finds its own uses for things”). Much of the genre’s atmosphere echoes film noir, and written works in the genre often use techniques from detective fiction.

—Wikipedia cyberpunk article

Novels

This list is from Wikipedia.

• The Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker
  • Software (1982)
  • Wetware (1988)
  • Freeware (1997)
  • Realware (2000)
• The Sprawl trilogy by William Gibson
  • Neuromancer (1984)
  • Count Zero (1986)
  • Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988)
• Schismatrix (1985) by Bruce Sterling
• Eclipse Trilogy (aka A Song Called Youth Trilogy) (1985–90) by John Shirley
• Psion (1985) by Joan D. Vinge (The Cat Novels)
• Hardwired (1986) by Walter Jon Williams
  • Voice of the Whirlwind (1987)
  • Solip:System (1989)
• The Marîd Audran series by George Alec Effinger
  • When Gravity Fails (1987)
  • A Fire in the Sun (1989)
  • The Exile Kiss (1991)
• Little Heroes (1987) by Norman Spinrad
• Islands in the Net (1988) by Bruce Sterling
• Fools (1992) by Pat Cadigan
• Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson
• Bridge trilogy by William Gibson
  • Virtual Light (1993)
  • Idoru (1996)
  • All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999)
• Heavy Weather (1994) by Bruce Sterling
• Trouble and Her Friends (1994) by Melissa Scott
• Fairyland (1995) by Paul J. McAuley
• The Diamond Age (1996) by Neal Stephenson
• Holy Fire (1996) by Bruce Sterling
• Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995) by K. W. Jeter
  • Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996)
  • Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon (2000)
• Night Sky Mine (1997) by Melissa Scott
• One of Us (1998) by Michael Marshall Smith
• Chimera (2000) by Will Shetterly
• Altered Carbon (2002) by Richard Morgan
• River of Gods (2004) by Ian McDonald
  • Cyberabad Days (2009)
• Accelerando (2005) by Charles Stross
  • Glasshouse (2006)
• The Mirrored Heavens (2008) by David J. Williams
• Starfish (1999) by Peter Watts

Movies

Most of the films listed are cyberpunk-related either through narrative or by thematic context. Films released before 1984 should be seen as precursors to the genre. This list is from Wikipedia.

• World on Wires (1973)
• Escape from New York (1981)
  • Escape from L.A. (1996)
• Blade Runner (1982)
• Burst City (1982)
• Tron (1982)
• Brainstorm (1983)
• Overdrawn At the Memory Bank (1983)
• Videodrome (1983)
• RoboCop (1987)
• Gunhed (1989)
• Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
  • Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992)
• Circuitry Man (1990)
• Hardware (aka M.A.R.K. 13, 1990)
• Megaville (1990)
• 964 Pinocchio (1990)
  • Rubber’s Lover (1996)
• Until the End of the World (1991)
• Freejack (1992)
• The Lawnmower Man (1992)
  • The Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996)
• Split Second (1992)
• Cyborg 2 (1993)
• Electric Tribe (1993)
• Crystal Fortune Run (1994)
• The City of Lost Children (1995)
• Hackers (1995)
• Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
• Judge Dredd (1995)
• Strange Days (1995)
• Terminal Justice (1995)
• Dobermann (1997)
• The Fifth Element (1997)
• Nirvana (1997)
• Redline (aka Deathline) (1997)
• Andromedia (1998)
• Pi (1998)
• The Matrix (1999)
  • The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
  • The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
• The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
• Avalon (2001)
• Electric Dragon 80.000 V (2001)
• I.K.U. (2001)
• Cypher (2002)
• Dead or Alive: Final (2002)
• Impostor (2002)
• Resurrection of the Little Match Girl (2002)
• All Tomorrow’s Parties (2003)
• Natural City (2003)
• Paycheck (2003)
• Immortal (2004)
• Paranoia 1.0 (aka One Point 0) (2004)
• Sigma (2005)
• A Scanner Darkly (2006)
• Chrysalis (2007)
• Eden Log (2007)
• Babylon A.D. (2008)
• The Gene Generation (2008)
• Sleep Dealer (2008)
• Tokyo Gore Police (2008)
• Surrogates (2009)
• Repo Men (2010)
• Tron: Legacy (2010)

Television

This list is from Wikipedia.

• Max Headroom (1987)
• Wild Palms (1993)
• TekWar (1994)
• Welcome to Paradox (1998)
• The X-Files: Two episodes of the series were written by William Gibson and contain cyberpunk themes.
  • Kill Switch (1998)
  • First Person Shooter (2000)
• Harsh Realm (1999)
• Total Recall 2070 (1999)
• Dark Angel (2000–2002)
• RoboCop: Prime Directives (2000)
• Charlie Jade (2005)
• Dollhouse (2009–2010)

Day one and film #98 in our 100 days of sci-fi is Primer, which, most definitely, is not a film for everyone.

This is the second time I’ve seen Primer (the first was several years ago), and I’m still not really sure what happens nor have I fully wrapped my head around the means of time travel and the nature of the paradoxes. However, I do know that even when I was confused, I wasn’t bored. For a film that opens with a group of naïve engineers working in a garage while wearing matching shirts and ties and discussing their projects using technical jargon, there is something consistently compelling about Shane Carruth’s directorial debut.

Time travel in Primer. From Flow of Light.

From the beginning, there is a sustained, yet reserved, emotional tension that permeates Primer, an affect aided and intensified by Carruth’s spare score. The film feels real, very real (the low budget and occasionally stilted acting or off-camera work help contribute to this), yet somehow more than real, like a dream or the best kind of science fiction.

I’m not sure how accurate the science throughout the story is (most of it sounded pretty good to me, and it turns out that Carruth is a mathematician and former engineer), but it doesn’t really matter. What makes Primer both a great film and good science fiction is that it’s less concerned with the science than with the relationship between the two main characters and how it changes as they interact with and realize the implications of the situation they’ve created.

Rob and Lindsay’s one-word review of Primer: “Huh?” and their helpful timeline.

Since their founding in March 2008, the Freebird Brooklyn Post-Apocalyptic has met 23 times and some of their selections include: The Drought by J.G. Ballard, Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut, Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick, The Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq. I hope to see you there!

Freebird Brooklyn Post-Apocalyptic Book Club
Freebird Books
123 Columbia St
Brooklyn, NY 11231

I plan on watching the movies in roughly the same order as the RT countdown, but with a few caveats. Netflix availability means I might need to juggle the order on some occasions. I also don’t plan on watching series out-of-order, so Star Trek, Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, etc. will be seen at the very end.

Wish me luck!

Since I’m committed (via this blog) to figuring out what “bad” sci-fi is, it’s clear that I need a better understanding of science fiction as a whole. What better place to start than Wikipedia’s science fiction portal? Unfortunately, the first thing I learned was that the title of this blog is redundant.

Sci-fi is already a pejorative term; SF is the preferred abbreviation for science fiction within the community. Coined in the 1950s (it rhymed with hi-fi!), writers and fans came to associate “sci-fi” with the increasingly popular low-budget and low-tech b-movies and pulp fiction that I grew up loving².

Damn. Learning this, it seems I should have named this blog “good” sci-fi! Or maybe “bad” SF. How important is this distinction? One blog mentioned, “This is an important discussion if you want to be sure not to insult particularly sensitive people” and included a link to the normblog post “SF, Part 3”:

Never much used within the sf community, the term [sci-fi] became very popular with journalists and media people generally, until by the 1970s it was the most common abbreviation used by non-readers of sf to refer to the genre, often with an implied sneer. Some critics within the genre, Terry Carr and Damon Knight among them, decided that, since the term was derogatory, it might be critically useful in distinguishing sf hackwork—particularly ill written, lurid adventure stories—from sf of a more intellectually demanding kind. Around 1978 the critic Susan Wood and others began pronouncing the term “skiffy.” In 1980s–90s usage “skiffy,” which sounds friendlier than “sci fi,” has perhaps for that reason come to be less condemnatory. Skiffy is colourful, sometimes entertaining, junk. Star Wars is skiffy.

Hmm… I really like the term sci-fi, while SF leaves me cold. Despite not being part of the science fiction community, I agree with Raj Patel at Class Worrier, who “dismisses the antipathy toward calling science fiction ‘sci fi’ as a ‘linguistic foible’ and ‘nothing but snobbery.’”³

1

Wikipedia “Science fiction” article. Retrieved 21 August 2010.

2

ibid.

3

“SF, Part 3.” normblog. Retrieved 21 August 2010.

Man Lives In Futuristic Sci-Fi World Where All His Interactions Take Place In Cyberspace

LINCOLNWOOD, IL—It’s Tuesday morning and Michael Royce, 27, is about to begin his day. Steeling himself for the wild journey ahead, this bold techno-traveler coolly presses a button, boots up his mainframe, and jacks into a strange, high-tech futurescape.

For Royce inhabits a sci-fi universe where his every transaction and correspondence occurs at lightning speed across the vast electronic data-stream known as “cyberspace.”

“I usually check a couple news sites first thing in the morning,” Royce says as he instantaneously uplinks current events from across the globe on his brightly illuminated view-screen. “CNN.com and Huffington Post are pretty good.”

“I’m just going to check my e-mail real quick,” he adds, conjuring, as if by magic, an entirely new info-box of data from out of the online ether.

In the blink of an eye, this real-life Johnny Mnemonic keys in his encrypted, top-secret passcode and enters the fortified binary area from which all his personal communiqués are sent forth in a dizzying array of ones and zeroes.

Read the entire article at The Onion

For some reason, this week’s Saturday night “double-feature” was more random than usual. After watching A Boy and His Dog (the only Netflix watch instantly sci-fi film Aline and I could agree on, since neither one of us knew anything about it), we ended up seeing 1987’s The Running Man because Aline got it confused with Freejack. Watching this adaptation of a Stephen King novel (penned as Richard Bachman) at the time, who would have guessed that Arnold Schwarzenegger would one day end up as governor of California, Jesse Ventura governor of Minnesota and, most important of all, that the choreographer, one Paula Abdul, would end up as a judge on American Idol!

Anyway, for a fun, “bad” sci-fi experience, you can’t go wrong with a 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger science-fiction movie, and The Running Man does not disappoint. The year is 2017, and “the world economy has collapsed. Food, natural resources and oil are in short supply. A police state, divided into paramilitary zones, rules with an iron hand. Television is controlled by the state. All art, music and communications are censored.” Oh noes! Hungry and bored, the people are pacified by sadistic reality television shows, the most popular of which, “The Running Man,” features convicts running for their lives from cartoonish stalkers with names such as Professor Subzero, Buzzsaw, Dynamo and Captain Freedom.

In this totalitarian future, no dissent is tolerated, yet somehow there is an underground resistance movement that fights for truth, justice and the old American way. But of course there is, because there’s always a resistance eking out The Future.

Los Angeles, 2017. Though future cities are always awesome, *ahem*, Blade Runner anyone?

The Running Man begins with Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a military helicopter pilot, leading a strike force sent to put down 1,500 civilians engaging in a food riot. Though Ben will later state, “I’m not into politics, I’m into survival,” when ordered to attack the unarmed crowd, he wisely chooses to refuse his orders and abort his mission. There’s a lot of women and children down there and all they want is food for god’s sake!

This action will land Ben in a detention zone and the military-controlled media will pin the massacre on him, labeling him the “Butcher of Bakersfield.” It’s here that he will first encounter the resistance, form “some really close friendships” and engage in a daring prison break that catches the eye of The Running Man’s host. If you can hear the chains clanking as this coaster is brought to the top of track, ignore them—the game show is about to begin.

Though the world has gone to hell-in-a-handbasket and the ruling military has no qualms about massacring innocent people, luckily for us the virtue of the resistance remains untarnished. In one hilarious exchange, resistance members turn away from the television screen and state:
“Can you believe this shit? 24 hours a day.”
“Seven days a week.”
“Don’t listen to it.”
“I worry about the kids… the network shut down the schools. The kids are either in hiding or getting basic training… Brainwashed by the TV.“

See, even in the dystopian future, it’s all about the children.

Climbing for Dollars

The easy morality that comes in exactly two shades is one of my problems with The Running Man as sci-fi. We never learn, nor is it asked, how the world got this way. Other than the fact they’re good people and it’s obvious what good people do, we never learn why the resistance is fighting or how they hope to restore the world. Their master plan primarily seems to consist of finding the “uplink” and broadcasting “the truth.”

Satiric as The Running Man may appear, Network it ain’t. However, it doesn’t seem like it’s trying too hard to make any point other than to be completely over-the-top and have a good time. And toward that end, casting Richard Dawson, the original host of Family Feud, to basically play himself as the corrupt game show host Damon Killian was brilliant. Every scene he’s in is hilarious.

“Hello, this is Killian. Give me the Justice Department, Entertainment Division.”

Ultimately, The Running Man is not good sci-fi nor is it even a particularly good dystopia film, however it’s definitely fun and entertaining. Some of the action bits get a bit long and repetitive, but every scene with Dawson and Ventura is full of win. Despite the violence (all of which is so cartoonish as to be non-offensive) and given its simplistic morality, I think The Running Man would be a great film for teens or for adults wishing to revisit the 80s and their teen years.

Initially I doubted the genius of this divinely inspired work, I mean the creative choices (outside the casting) were questionable at best.

The terrible sound design includes confusing things, like the apparent telepathic communications between boy and dog (which sounded more like some off screen commentary by some annoying old dude), and the random beeping noise which one eventually realizes is the dog’s extra sensory chick sonar, used to find potential sexual rape partners for Don. At first I thought: are misogynistic super powers the only ones that will manifest after the holocaust? Or is this dog a robot-bat hybrid? Or is my cell phone making a weird noise? But then I was distracted by the thought that perhaps, just perhaps, Don would take his shirt off at some point during the film and I forgot all about beeping and raping.

Don’t worry, after some barely intelligible movie theater sequence featuring some sort of blue film, a peeping tom sequence and a gun fight, yes, he does eventually take his shirt off.

Then he goes underground to follow a woman against the advice of his dog who he leaves injured topside (No! Don, don’t do it!). There is a delightful bath scene where Don is bathed by a large male robot while being watched by a number of oddly dressed underworld dwellers. Then Don is hooked up to some sort of sperm pump and married to a long line of brides. Not the most romantic wedding I have seen, but also not the least. Then there is an escape and an ending that just warms the cockles of one’s soul. Sigh. I mean Don really does see the error of his ways and that impregnating scores of women is not the most fulfilling thing in one’s post-apocalyptic life, caring for one’s telepathic dog is.

Admittedly the mise-en-scène is confusing for most of the film. A good portion of the film is muddied by poorly lit, dark and confusing shots. The distances between things were odd, particularly during the early sequence where Don watches a gang dig up canned goods unnoticed from a safe distance. His brilliant hiding spot appears to be about 30 unobstructed feet away in a flat bright desert. (huh? How is that possible?)

Holocausts affect eye sight. (Of course!)

This is comforting since it evens the post-apocalyptic playing field for those who need the benefits of a LensCrafters (which has been a real concern of mine) plus the whole movie makes a lot more sense once you understand this.

The bizarre clownish makeup worn by the underground dwellers makes perfect sense: poor eyesight and artificial lighting really create the need for white-face makeup with bright lipstick and rouge – so that one might more clearly recognize the smiling faces of one’s fellow undergrounders.

The fact that a young nubile Don would need to rape women in a post-apocalyptic world is crazy, especially if he has viable sperm, a telepathic dog, and isn’t glowing green! But if the ladies couldn’t see too well, this makes a lot more sense. I don’t imagine anyone would be smelling too good and his character didn’t exactly have the best game. The female he finds and intends to rape initiates sex after the gun fight. It must be that she finally got a good look at him close up.

At any rate, I recommend this film to anyone who loves dogs and a young Don Johnson.