Working on the paper...

I must say, it is really convenient that the science fiction world has abundant information on the internet, namely in the form of blogs. I'm working on my "As Women Fight" paper and the author's blog has been quite helpful, not to mention interesting.

Other science fiction thoughts for the weekend...I caught a bit of a movie on SyFy on Friday. It was crap. Is anybody with me when I say Syfy movies are decreasing in caliber? Maybe I just don't watch enough of them to get a clear idea of how good they are.

Anywho...good luck to everyone while paper writing and movie watching. I'm sure I'm not the only one sitting in the living room working on the paper for this class right now :)

Sintel

Not sci-fi, but I think it bears mentioning that the latest open movie project has finally been released to the public. The Blender Foundation, which supports the development of the 3d modelling and animation package, Blender, supports these movies and uses them as a way to introduce new features into the program. Previous movies include Elephant's Dream, which borders sci-fi and fantasy, and Big Buck Bunny. All three are worth a watch and I highly recommend that you watch it in HD, the visuals are pretty amazing. Also, maybe Elephant's dream might make an interesting paper topic.

Humans vs. Aliens

So, as I read and reread Pelican Bar, I have a hard time figuring out why everyone else saw them as humans. I personally saw them as aliens from the second page and had my idea confirmed, to me at least, throughout the story. However, to write my paper, I feel that I need to be able to understand everyone else's perspective. So, if you're bored or need more posts or just feel like commenting anyway, tell me: What did you see, alien or human? Why?

Science Fiction in Commercials

This weekend I was sitting in the auditorium of the Cobb Theater waiting for The Town to start. One thing that I noticed, as a result of this class, was that three of the advertisements before the start of trailers featured heavy SciFi themes. I don't know what the other two products were, but one of the commercials was the linked to car commercial (click title of the post). Has anyone else noticed a recent spike in SciFi ads?

Sharktopus

One of the things I like about Syfy is that is doesn't take itself that seriously. This is a station that plays some of the hokiest movies ever, and also professional wrestling. I think I've spent whole weekends watching their original movies.

The newest SyFy original, Sharktopus, aired this weekend, and I missed it. For those who don't know what it is, I've linked the trailer in the title (fair warning: it's so great it could cause temporary blindness). It combines two of my favorite things: large, arbitrarily violent predators and late nineties computer effects. Did anyone happen to see it? Is it as wonderful as I think it is?

women and science fiction

We have all noticed the recent trend in female narrators and some feminist themes in our readings. I doing a bit of research as to why this trend is taking place and I found this article (link in the title) that I thought was pretty interesting. It talks a little about feminism in science fiction and some important gender bending stories. I thought some of you might enjoy it. I found it really interesting that one of the key stories mention "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" by James Tiptree was actually written by a female, Alice Sheldon, who was writing as a male.

The article is rather long, mostly because it summarizes a story entitled "When It Changed", but I think the article overall is pretty interesting and definitely relates to our discussions of feminism in science fiction.

The Thirteenth Floor

Good evening all! (or should I say Good Morning?)

I watched a really sci-fi movie the other day which typically isn't my thing if I'm completely honest. But it was very good. Its called The Thirteenth Floor. The 1998 version. It was pretty awesome.

Basically this computer company builds a virtual reality of 1937 LA and they can connect into the system by downloading their minds and personalities into a simulated person in the VR. One of the characters has to go and investigate the world because his colleague was brutally murdered and he left him a message "in the system". The message goes astray and one of the 1937 characters discovers that his reality isn't a reality at all and has a major identity crisis.

The movie is loosely based on the book Simulcron-3. It was quite a good movie, but also slightly scary. It got me thinking-- how do we know that our world isn't just a computer simulation?

This got me to reading. Here is an article from the Philosophical Quarterly that I hope will work. I had some issues with it earlier. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3542867

It's basically an article that Nick Bostram wrote trying to prove via math that we do actually live in a computer simulation.

If you click on the title you should be able to watch the preview of the movie. Enjoy!