‘Saturn Run’, the novel by the writer John Sandford and photographer Ctein is a well knit combination of Science Fiction and Espionage Thriller all in one. The Science Fiction consists of the voyage of a Earth spaceship traveling to Saturn after an alien spaceship is discovered entering our Solar system and going to the ringed planet. The story therefore fits into two of my six ‘Great Themes of Science Fiction’. Number 3, Alien encounter along with number 1, the Exploration of Space.
Saturn Run by John Sandford and Ctein
The Espionage Thriller part comes from the fact that there are two Earth ships, one American and one Chinese and each side is out to grab some alien technology all for itself. The story takes place in the year 2066 so the science and politics haven’t changed all that much from today.
As far as the Science Fiction is concerned ‘Saturn Run’ tries very hard to be as accurate and up to date as is possible. Everything in the two Earth Ships is based on extrapolations from current technologies and the technical descriptions while brief, this is a novel after all, are still clear enough to give a good idea of what is going on.
The story is certainly exciting and well written with an ensemble cast of well developed characters. The action is also fast paced, it certainly kept my attention.
I do have a criticism however. (Spoiler Alert: If you don’t want to know too much skip this paragraph and the next) The alien encounter is probably the least interesting part of the story. We never meet any actual aliens, the alien station out in Saturn’s rings is kind of an automated supply depot and it’s computer is programmed not to give out any information about the aliens.
It does give out technology however, everything anybody would want to know about making and using anti-matter. In fact the aliens in ‘Saturn Run’ are pretty much just a plot device. Supplying something valuable that the Americans and Chinese can then fight over.
To me, the idea that the first encounter with another intelligent species would give us more cause to fight amongst ourselves is pretty depressing. Unfortunately, knowing human beings it could very well turn out to be that way.
With that in mind I do recommend ‘Saturn Run’. It’s a fun read and the technology keeps your attention. If you liked ‘The Martian’, and who didn’t, you’ll enjoy it.
In my previous installment of ‘What is Science Fiction’ I completed our survey of what I like to call the six ‘Great Themes of Science Fiction’. Now what I’d like to do in this last post is to carry out an examination of the differences between Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Most of the time it’s rather easy to tell one from the other. We know that Andy Weir’s ‘The Martian’ is Science Fiction because it deals realistically with the conditions both on Mars, the rarefied air and extreme cold, and in outer space, zero gravity. Also, the technology in ‘The Martian’, whether it be the spaceship’s ion engines or the living habitats on Mars are solidly based on the technology we presently have.
Realistic Science Fiction: The Martian
On the other hand, in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ by J. R. R. Tolkein the way a ring of invisibility or a sword that glows when bad guys are near work is never explained or even discussed, they’re just magic.
Magic just works because it’s magic
To me that’s the cardinal difference: In Science Fiction the assumption is that we, and by we I mean both the reader and the characters in the story, are intelligent enough that with time and effort we can understand whatever mysteries or powerful objects there are in the story. Sometimes this assumption is even emphasized by relating the main character’s education. Remember in the original ‘Star Trek’ series how Kirk went to Star Fleet Academy while Spock went to the Vulcan Science Academy, that’s where they learned how to control their advanced technology. (And remember how Victor Frankenstein learned science at Ingolstadt University)
In Science Fiction characters acquire their powers through education
This expectation of understandability limits the kind of plot twists and deus ex machina that the author can get away with in Science Fiction because everything has to feel natural, understandable.
In Fantasy however, the assumption is on the supernatural element, Gandalf and Sauron have magical powers because they are themselves magical. We never learn where Gandalf learned his magic, he just is magic.
Frodo can never understand how the one ring works simply because he is natural and it is supernatural. This means that in Fantasy the author has fewer restrictions on how to get his characters into and out of danger. Just have a Balrog appear and only later reveal that Gandalf was of course stronger than the Balrog was anyway, it’s all magic after all.
Gandalf and the Balrog
But now let’s a moment and consider ‘Star Wars’ for example. Certainly it has elements that are straight out of Science Fiction, spaceships, robots (O’k they’re called droits, so what?) and laser weapons. However it also has an all pervasive ‘Force’ that gives certain characters power that the others don’t have for no obvious reason and at the same time it seems like every planet has a breathable atmosphere and normal, that is Earth gravity.
Stars Wars. Science Fiction or Fantasy, or both?
This is intentional, when George Lukas first conceived of his epic he wanted a smooth blend of realism and mythology and that has certainly been one of the prime reasons for the saga’s enduring popularity.
It seems obvious therefore that any attempt to draw a hard line between Science Fiction and Fantasy would just be a waste of time. Instead let’s just take pleasure in both genres while promoting the best Science Fiction.
This brings to an end my little seminar on Science Fiction; I hope you all enjoyed it. Let me know what you thought and I look forward to reading your comments.
This time I intend to complete our discussion of the ‘Great Themes’ of Science Fiction as well as discuss Science Fiction stories that try to avoid using any of the themes, it’s not as easy as you might think.
As a reminder last time I proposed six themes that were central to the genre of Science Fiction:
The exploration of space and/or time
The effects of new technology, invention on human society
Contact with alien life, alien intelligence
The creation of artificial life, artificial intelligence
The long term future, purpose (if there is one) of humanity
The nature and purpose (if there is one) of the Universe itself
In my previous post we talked a bit about the first three themes so with out further ado here’s number four.
The Creation of Artificial Life, Artificial Intelligence and the novel I’ll use as an example will be ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelly which was first published in 1818. Of all the novels I’ve mentioned so far I think undoubtedly ‘Frankenstein’ is the most famous but just in case there’s someone who’s never heard of it here’s the story.
Frankenstein, First Edition Cover
The story concerns a scientist named Victor Frankenstein who as a child read about the old alchemists and their search for the philosopher’s stone and the secret of immortality. As a student at the University of Ingolstadt he gains the knowledge of the then brand new sciences of chemistry and electricity. Using this knowledge he manufactures and brings life to an artificial man constructed from materials he obtained in “The dissecting room and the slaughter-house”.
The very instant the creature is brought to life Frankenstein is horrified by what he has accomplished and flees not only from his creation but from his responsibility to it. This is certainly the first moral of the novel, that scientists must be willing to take responsibility for their discoveries, a moral that rings even stronger today in our world of nuclear weapons, electronic surveillance, gene modification and you know I could go on and on.
The rest of the story continues the morality play with the creature, who is both intelligent and humane, being tormented for it’s ugliness and finally taking a brutal revenge on it’s maker for having abandoned it.
The plot of a scientist creating an intelligent being and then being destroyed by their creation has now become the most overdone cliché in all of Science Fiction. Whether the creature is portrayed as a robot or a trained ape (‘The Planet of the Apes’ has a strong trace of Frankenstein in it) doesn’t matter, Frankenstein’s monster is as alive today as it ever was.
Moving on to our next Great Theme ‘The Future and Purpose (if there is one) of Humanity. Finding a novel that only displayed this theme turned out to be quite difficult so in the end I decided to cheat and go with H. G. Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’ published in 1895. Now obviously The Time Machine also includes our first theme of Exploration of Space / Time but because it also demonstrates our present theme so clearly I hope you’ll forgive me.
The Time Machine, first edition cover
In The Time Machine a scientist invents a means of traveling back and forth through time and uses his device to travel forward to the year 802,701 A.D. Arriving in the far future the Time Traveler, his name is never given in the story, finds that the human race has continued to evolve, indeed it had split into two species, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Time Traveler conjectures that the split into two species happened when the rich aristocrats of his own time had forced the labouring poor to live underground (H. G. Wells was a socialist who got the idea from the building of the first London underground subway).
Without any need to struggle the Eloi have become both beautiful and graceful but at the same time they are small, weak and ineffectual. On the other hand the Morlocks are brutish troglodytes, unable to stand the bright light of the daytime. Also, because there are no large animals remaining on Earth (Because of mankind’s destruction of the environment?) the Eloi have become vegetarians while the Morlocks have turned the tables on their former masters and now eat the Eloi!
Not a pretty picture of our future perhaps but certainly one that illustrates our theme of ‘The Future and Purpose of Mankind’. Science Fiction stories that make use of the future of mankind theme do have a tendency to be either bleak or preachy, or both. Sometimes the author’s vision of the way ‘things ought to be’ can get in the way of telling the story but in my mind at least ‘The Time Machine’ avoids this problem.
We now come to our last theme ‘The Nature and Purpose (if there is one) of the Universe Itself’. If you think about it this theme really borders on religion, another way of stating it could be ‘Why did God create the Universe’ or even “Was there a recognizable “GOD” who created the Universe’. In keeping with the otherworldly aspects of this theme the novel I shall use as an example is H. G. Wells’ “Men Like Gods” first published in 1923.
Men Like Gods, first edition cover
Another thing to keep in mind is that in this theme, even more than our previous one, the author can easily find himself telling his readers how he things things ought to be instead of allowing them to imagine how things could be. In ‘Men like Gods’ Wells falls into this trap, making the story more sermon than Science Fiction.
In ‘Men like Gods’ the main character, a Mr. Barnstaple, is involved in a traffic accident that inexplicably transports him to a parallel world called Utopia. The fact that Wells has now resorted to magic when in his earlier stories he would have extrapolated from science is a symptom of how he’s become more interested in describing how the people living in a utopia would behave than in providing a realistic basis for that world.
And Wells’ utopia is based upon ideas originated by the French philosopher Henri Bergson and promoted by Wells’ fellow socialist G. Bernard Shaw. The basic idea of Bergson and Shaw is that the entire Universe is permeated by a ‘Force of Life’. (And if that reminds you of ‘The Force’ in Star Wars, yes that is a variation of the idea). This Life Force is what causes evolution as it experiments with living creatures with the goal of creating more complex, more intelligent life.
The Utopia in ‘Men like Gods’ is simply a world that is further along in this process, about 3000 years in the story and as Mr. Barnstaple returns to our Earth with all its troubles he resolves to dedicate the rest of his life to bringing utopia to our world.
Before I finish for today I’d like to take just a brief moment to discuss those Science Fiction stories that don’t actually make any real use of our Great Themes. You may recall a review I wrote in my post of 1Mar17 about the novel ‘Luna: New Moon’ by Ian McDonald. In that review I made the point that even though the story takes place on the Moon, and there’s Hi-Tech wizardry on every page the plot would fit just as well during the time of the emperors of Rome.
So is ‘Luna: New Moon’ a Science Fiction story? Of course each of us will have to decide for ourselves but I’m always willing to be inclusive. The important thing for me is that a Science Fiction story should make me think. I have found that most of the time it will be about one of the six themes I’ve discussed, but thinking is the important thing.
Next time I’d like to finish my discussion of Science Fiction by considering the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy, at least as I see it. Till then.
Today I’d like to begin talking about great themes or big questions that Science Fiction allows us to think about and discuss in clearer, more precise ways than any other form of writing. It is true that some of these themes can be written about in other genres, some were in fact first written about in other literary genres. However I hope to make a case that they are best treated as Science Fiction.
As I mentioned in the first part of this series I intend to examine these themes or questions using the novels and stories of the first two acknowledged masters of Science Fiction, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.
Without any further ado the six themes or questions are:
The exploration of space and/or time
The effects of new technology, invention on human society
Contact with alien life, alien intelligence
The creation of artificial life, artificial intelligence
The long term future, purpose (if there is one) of humanity
The nature and purpose (if there is one) of the Universe itself
Now obviously many, probably most Science Fiction stories combine more than one of these ideas in them. However I’m going to try to find examples that fit only into the single category I’m discussing at that time.
Let’s Start with ‘The Exploration of Space and / or Time and the novel I will use as an example is Jules Verne’s ‘From the Earth to the Moon and a Trip around it’. The title is pretty much the plot. In 1865, right after the American Civil War union engineers who had developed Ironclad warships, repeating rifles, railroad mounted artillery and etc. are now looking for new challenges to tackle so they decide to build a cannon large enough to fire a projectile at the Moon.
Illustration to ‘From the Earth to The Moon’
When a daring Frenchman volunteers to be a passenger on the projectile two of the American engineers decide to join him and the three-man crew are off on a journey very reminiscent of the voyage of Apollo 8 nearly a hundred years later.
Now Verne’s novel is a pretty simple story, it’s really about nothing more than using science and the technology it provides to travel someplace that no one has ever been. But isn’t that simple idea built into our human DNA. Ever since the first humans left Africa we have always used our knowledge and our tools (science and technology) to journey over that next hill and the hill after that. That makes ‘The Exploration of Space and / or Time’ almost certainly the first of the great themes of Science Fiction.
Our second great theme is “The Effect of new technology or invention on Human Society’ and our example will be ‘The Invisible Man’ written by H. G. Wells in 1897. Once again the title is the plot; a chemist discovers a formula that makes living flesh transparent, invisible. Now there’s an important point to be made here. Wells takes a page or two to discuss how invisibility might actually be possible, just how the optics of transparency works rather than just giving the power of invisibility to a ring or a cloak. This is science fiction taking knowledge we actually have and extrapolating beyond it in a way that is distinctly different a fantasy novel just saying ‘it’s magic’.
Poster for ‘The Invisible Man’
The chemist, Jack Griffin uses the formula on himself and becomes invisible. Now we get the moral of the story, science fiction is a great platform for illustrating morals, just as fables are. Anyway, the power that Griffin now has goes to his head. He can steal anything he wants, spy on anyone he wants, murder anyone he wants and no one can stop him because no one can see him. He becomes mad from the power that his technology has given him, perhaps a valuable warning for our present technology mad society. As with exploration, the concept of technology changing human society is as old as human society is making this another very ancient theme indeed.
Our third great theme is that of Contact with Alien Life, Alien Intelligence and the novel we shall use to illustrate it is H. G. Wells ‘The War of the Worlds’ that was also first published in 1897. In the novel Martians invade Earth in order to conquer it as a new home for themselves and humanity is helpless against their superior technology.
‘The War of the Worlds’
Wells used some of the best science of his time in “The War of the Worlds’ including infrared radiation (the Martians heat ray) the use of poison gas and mechanized devices in warfare (the Martians war machines are basically tanks on legs) so that even after more than a century the story seems very modern.
What Wells was really doing however it criticizing his own country of Britain’s and the rest of Europe’s empires in Africa and Asia in the late 19th century. “How would you like it?” Wells asks, if a technically superior race dropped from the sky and said “This is our land now! You belong to us now!” Again we see how Science Fiction is being used as a platform from which we can observe and criticize human behavior.
I think I’m going to have to stop here for today; this is already the longest post I’ve ever published. Next time we’ll finish our survey of Science Fiction’s great themes and we’ll also discuss whether or not a story can be Science Fiction without using one of our themes. Can a Science Fiction story just be a story? (Hint: Of course it can.)
What is Science Fiction, boy now there’s a tough question to answer. We all have a feeling about what makes a story Science Fiction or not. The technology is more advanced than in our present day world; lasers replace firearms, rockets replace airplanes and automobiles and etc. Also, Science Fiction stories are often set in places no human has yet visited whether it be the planets or stars or perhaps the future. Then of course there’s the alien forms of life, creatures whose nature and motives are completely unknown to us, at least in chapter one. It seems then that Science Fiction takes what we know, science is the Latin word for knowledge after all, and proceeds from there to speculate on what we don’t know.
But at the same time isn’t Science Fiction more than that, doesn’t Science Fiction allow us to ask in story form the big questions, doesn’t it enable us to think about the very nature and purpose of reality and mankind’s place in it. With Science Fiction we can look out at the Universe and then turn around and look back at ourselves.
I’m going to take a few posts over the next couple of weeks to talk about just what I think Science Fiction is. The posts may not be one after the other but hopefully I’ll keep them close together.
I’m thinking of doing this in four or five parts. Today will be just a basic introduction of Science Fiction along with a brief history. Next time I’d like to discuss what I’ll call the great themes of Science Fiction, which will be followed by an analysis of some of the most famous Science Fiction novels and stories using those themes. In the final part I’ll talk about the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy as I see it.
Now right up front I admit that this is going to be pretty much just my opinion. Oh, I’ll do my best to get the authors’ names and the titles correct, but really I don’t expect anyone to agree with me completely. Indeed, feel free to dispute everything I say.
If I just prompt you to think a little about Science Fiction. Or if you are inspired to find and read one of the novels I mention for the first time, then I will have done my job.
As a literary form Science Fiction has a much older history than you might think. What is generally regarded as the first Science Fiction romance was “True History” by the second century CE poet Lucian of Samosata. (By the way the term romance simply means a story composed in the Roman fashion, today we would call it a novel or novella)
The idea of writing a story that you don’t want anyone to believe was so unusual at that time that Lucian felt the need to tell his readers at the end that the things in his tales “do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all”.
The story in “True History” concerns a group of travelers who are swept up to the Moon on a whirlwind where they witness a war between the armies of the Moon and the Sun over which would colonize the morning star. The story therefore contains two of the elements we mentioned earlier. Travel to a place no one had ever traveled to before and while there encountering strange and alien creatures.
Over the next 1500 years or so a rare story would be written that today we would call science fiction. Cyrano de Bergerac (yes he really lived, big nose and everything) wrote another story about a trip to the Moon but he used a balloon and, get this, rockets.
It wasn’t until the late 19th century however that we get authors who wrote several Science Fiction stories thereby establishing Science Fiction as a genre. I’m speaking of course about Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and this is where I’m going to stop for today. Next time I’m going to use the novels of these two pioneers in Science Fiction to discuss what I call the ‘Great Themes of Science Fiction.” Till then.
First Published back in 2015 the Novel ‘Luna: New Moon’ is an exciting, fast paced tale of five powerful families fighting for control of the industries that keep humanity’s lunar colony alive. The author Ian McDonald has himself described Luna as ‘Game of Domes’ and ‘Dallas in Space’, I think I’ll call it a space opera.
Novel, Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald
The plot revolves around the Corta family who control the He3 production on the Moon that powers the fusion reactors back on Earth. Rich and powerful, the Cortas are involved in a large number of rivalries and struggles both between themselves and with the other four families that basically run the Moon.
Although there is technology aplenty this story could just as easily have been set in the Italy of the Borgia’s or among the Frankish Merovingians. In other words it’s a story of human passions and mostly bad ones at that. The technology is basically used as scenery or to facilitate the human interactions rather than driving the story.
I do have one little criticism to mention. In the novel there are a number of individuals who were born on Earth along with many who were born on the Moon itself. Now the Moon born are stuck on the Moon, their bones and muscles are too weak to be capable of surviving Earth’s gravity. Now, that may very well turn out to be true but in ‘Luna: New Moon’ the people from Earth also can never return to Earth after they’ve been on the Moon more than two years.
That is almost certainly not true! In my post back on 15Feb17 I mentioned the medical studies being carried out right now on the Astronaut Scott Kelly who had spent an entire year in zero gravity! While astronaut Kelly did require several days to adjust back to Earth gravity and scientists studying him have found some minor changes in his physiology he is well, healthy and back to living a full life. If returning to Earth after one year in zero ‘g’ is not a problem at all can two years on in Lunar gravity be so debilitating.
Based on Astronaut Kelly’s example, and others, I have no doubt that a person can return to survive returning to Earth after more than two years on the Moon or Mars.
Aside from that minor point I did quite enjoy Luna: New Moon and do recommend it but with a warning. There’s quite a lot of pretty graphic sex in the novel so if you’re the type who doesn’t want to read about ‘dried semen stains’, well you decide for yourself.
One more thing; Luna: New Moon is actually the first part of a two novel story. The second novel, Luna: Wolf Moon is supposed to be published this month. So if you do read Luna: New Moon don’t expect any conclusion, in fact the ending is very much a cliffhanger, and don’t buy Luna: Wolf Moon until you’ve read Luna: New Moon.
Now the big question. If Luna: New Moon reminded me of ‘I Claudius’ as much as anything else, if the science is just scenery then is Luna really a science fiction novel? I’m not the first person to ask this question but I’ve thought a lot about it and I’m planning on a future post, or more likely a series of posts discussing just what is science fiction, what are the GREAT THEMES OF SCIENCE FICTION and where is the crossover between science fiction and other literary genres, Fantasy in particular. It won’t be too long, I’m working on it so keep watching for it.
In a nutshell the novel “Dark Secret” a novel by Edward M. Lerner, is the story of a spaceship crew who escape the total destruction of the entire solar system and have to re-establish the human race on a new planet. Familiar territory but “Dark Secret” does manage to bring some new twists to the theme.
Dark Secret by Edward M. Lerner
We begin aboard the spaceship Clermont, named for the first steamship because this Clermont is testing a new form of propulsion, the Dark Energy Drive. Since DED derives it’s thrust from dark energy it requires no actual fuel, and that’s all we ever learn about Dark Energy Drive. That’s the first problem I had with this novel, I just never got a feel for the spaceship.
Anyway, while stopping at Mars for resupply, the crew of the Clermont is seized by Martian police and taken to meet the Martian President and his Chief of Staff. The President then informs the crew, and the reader of course, that a astronomer measuring gravity waves has calculated that a nearby Gamma Ray Burst will destroy all life in the entire solar system in three years. The President’s plan is to build a fleet of ships equipped with DED which will colonize a new planet around Alpha Centauri. The Clermont will leave first to scout the new planet.
While the Clermont is being modified for its interstellar mission the Martian Chief of Staff shows up and informs the crew that the astronomer has updated his calculations and the GRB is going to happen in eight months. He throws some equipment, and three new crew members onto the Clermont and orders her to take off, the modifications can be completed while the ship is fleeing the solar system. I don’t know about you but I don’t get a good feeling for this mission.
I don’t want to give too much more away, and there are plenty more twists and turns and conflicts, but while every science fiction story asks its reader to accept a few things out of the ordinary “Dark Secret” is really a strain on credibility. There’s one part where the entire crew goes into hibernation leaving the autopilot to navigate around a cosmic string! Ah, yea, right!
Things get a little better in the second half of the novel when the ship, now renamed the Endeavor, finally reaches a new planet over a thousand light years away, (remember that cosmic string). Here one of the crew who was added at the last moment decides she knows exactly how the new human race should be organized; Hint, she’s no fan of Thomas Jefferson and all man being equal. Even on the new world however, the only real problem the crew encounter in colonizing a new home for what’s left of humanity is the would-be dictator. Again, that’s a little bit hard to take.
I’m not saying “Dark Secret” is a bad novel. I read it through in less than two days so it certainly kept my attention. There is something new on just about every page. It’s just that “Dark Secret” seems to brush past some real problems and descriptions in order to get on with the CONFLICT in the story. In doing so however it also brushes past a lot of the details that would give a real feeling to the story.
To start with “Passengers” is a certainly a visually attractive film, and I don’t just mean Jennifer Lawrence. It’s true, the best part of the film are the special effects and especially the set design. The starship Avalon is the starship you dream of being on.
Passengers. Maybe they could have shown the starship in one of their posters?
The biggest problem with this movie is the plot, it’s sooooo slow and so predictable, especially the love story. The movie begins as the starship Avalon is about a third of the way through it’s 120 year journey to the colony Homestead II when the ship has a collision with a rather large asteroid. The ship’s deflector screen prevents the ship from being destroyed but there is some damage, the first instance of which is when passenger Chris Pratt is awoken from hibernation much too early. For the next half an hour we are treated to watching Pratt learn he is the only person awake, watching him try wake up members of the crew and otherwise try to find a way out of his problem as he slowly goes a little crazy. This is the worst part of the film.
The story gets a little better when Jennifer Lawrence wakes up (I’m trying not to give away too much of the plot here). At least now we have two people trying to figure out what they can do. As Jennifer and Chris fall in love and then break up we occasionally are shown small parts of the ship beginning to malfunction as Cleaning robots, visual displays and other systems run into walls or flicker on and off.
Here we have the biggest plot hole in the story. As the failures begin to cascade we are shown the ship’s computer keeping tract of all the breakdowns but for some reason it hasn’t been programmed to wake up any of the crew to fix the bloody problem. At the same time boy engineer Chris is so engrossed in Jennifer he doesn’t notice the accumulating malfunctions. If fact we have to wait for crewman Lawrence Fishburne to be awakened before anybody says “Hey we gotta fix this”!
Now, since three’s a crowd, Fishburne has suffered internal damage during his revival and literally only lives long enough to get Chris and Jennifer off their well exercised butts while giving them his authority to access sections of the ship they hadn’t been able to get into and control the computer systems in ways they’d never been able to. Then he dies leaving Chris and Jennifer to risk their lives saving the ship while falling in love again.
Don’t get me wrong, the movie isn’t bad but it is slow and predictable. As I said earlier the set design does have a real feel of what we imagine a starship passenger liner to be and the story does take the effort to think about why people would ever consider leaping 120 years into the future to begin a completely new life on a new world but hey, isn’t that kinda just the story of our country.
I guess if you like Chris Pratt or Jennifer Lawrence, or if you really like starships you’re like “Passengers” otherwise this movie will probably leave you feeling a little flat.
Last night we were treated to the season finale of the National Geographic channel’s six part series “Mars”. Now I’m not sure but does season finale mean there’s more to come next season? Or is this the final finale? Either way it’s a good time for a review of the show.
Mars on the Nat Geo Channel
For those who haven’t seen Mars the series combines a fictional depiction of the first attempts to build a colony on the Red Planet with interviews from scientists and engineers who hope to turn the fiction into reality over the next few decades. Each episode in the series was intended to highlight one of the many dangers the first travelers to Mars will face while showing how they will overcome those dangers with courage, ingenuity and hard work.
While trying to avoid any spoilers the final episode posed perhaps the greatest challenge of all those facing Mars explorers. It’s not an engineering problem or the lack of resources on Mars, those problems we can easily overcome. The problem is the unwillingness of the people back on Earth to accept the inevitable casualties that will come as we explore new worlds in deep space.
The fifth episode had ended with just such a disaster as seven of the Mars colonists were killed. The finale then opens with the political and corporate leaders back on Earth trying to decide whether or not to order an evacuation of the remaining explorers. The interview segments then discussed how the near disaster of Apollo 13 brought about a cancelation of the final two Apollo missions and a complete ending of Human missions beyond Earth orbit for the last 45 years.
This is a big problem. When the colonists of Roanoke Island died they simply disappeared into history, we still aren’t really certain just what happened to them. When somebody dies on Mars however we’ll see it live (O’k there’ll be a time delay for the speed of light) and in full living colour. Now the adventurers who will go to Mars are ready to accept the risk but will we here back on Earth? As I said, this timidness on the part of the Earthbound public may well be in greatest difficulty to be faced in conquering Mars.
As to Mars the Series. Well, I can tell you it’s going in my video collection. It wasn’t perfect, the sound quality of the fictional sections was rather poor, some of the actors seemed like they were mumbling into their chests. But on the whole it was intelligent, thought provoking science fiction of the best kind. Hopefully Nat Geo, the Science Channel and other media outlets will find the way to provide us with more series like “Mars”.
Well, that’s my opinion. I’d like to hear yours. Till next time.
I have a big problem with this Movie! The alien visitors are not only smart enough to span interstellar space and come to Earth they are smart enough to have a deeper understanding of time than we do. And when they arrive on Earth they know that we are a divided species, they seem to know something of our physiology and technology. Yet somehow they haven’t managed to learn English or any other Earth language, nor do they manage to do so by the end of the movie. Seriously, at the film’s climax Amy Adams is trying to get the big message across to them using their language!
I had the same problem with Close Encounters of the Third Kind back in 1977, I know that’s almost heresy but it’s true. In CE3K the aliens have been watching us since at least Dec1945 when they abducted Navy flight 19 but in the next 32 years they haven’t learned English! I’m sorry but that really ruined CE3K for me and it pretty much ruins Arrival.
I remember the old 1950 Film “The Day the Earth Stood Still” where at the beginning of the movie the Alien Klaatu walks out of his flying saucer speaking perfect English. He explains this by announcing that “they” have been listening in on our radio and TV broadcasts. Which is probably how any aliens would learn about our existence in the first place.
Arrival’s best part is in fact where Amy Adams learns the aliens written language where every word is based on a circle (see example below). They state in the film that this makes every word a palindrome, a word that is spelled the same backwards and forwards, but if you look at the example that’s not true, the alien symbol is different depending on whether you go around the circle clockwise or counter-clockwise.
Example of Alien Language in Arrival
As to the Aliens of Arrival themselves, they aren’t very interesting. They look pretty much like octopuses that have lost one tentacle and we don’t get to see a great deal of their technology. The film is really more about how we humans react to the arrival of aliens than the aliens themselves. In that case however “Arrival” spends too much time with Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner and we only get snippets of news reports on how humanity as a whole is reacting.
Serious Science Fiction movies are rare and need to be supported but I just can’t give it my wholehearted approval. It’s not bad, it’s just not very alien. The scriptwriters needed to spend more time on the aliens and not just their language. Well, that’s my opinion, what’s yours?
