August 05, 2010

Or We Will All Hang Separately.
posted by homunculus 14 years ago
  • No time now, but will bookmark. *rubs hands in anticipation*
  • Just read it; nice story, nice message of potential recovery from global disaster, but something about (SPOILER ALERT) how hope emerges from an alliance of science geeks and Native Americans felt a little like "I've heard that song before". I have nothing against that kind of '70s retro-apocalyptic motif; I must note that one of my all-time favorite sci-fi tales is the movie "Silent Running" (a dystopian eco-treehugging tale about attempting and failing to preserve a little bit of the world's forests in space, with an appropriately unhinged Bruce Dern and some cute robots who helped inspire R2D2... yes, that's Joan Baez singing a depressing folk song for extra '70s liberal cred, but that song and the entire soundtrack was written by Peter "PDQ Bach" Schickele, it was directed by the special effects supervisor from "2001" and co-written by a couple kids named Cimino and Bochco. I honestly recommend it. But I digress. A lot.)
  • Continuing the Silent Running digression, I have often quoted the dead captain (kept in a freezer, in case he needs to be consulted) when people call me with questions about things I worked on 5 or 10 years ago. "You only wake me up when you want to know something". And isn't there a "surfing to a firey end while reentering the atmosphere" scene that reminds me of Slim Pickens riding that H-Bomb in Dr. Strangelove? [Which sets you up to make this the RANDOM ASSOCIATIONS THREAD].
  • The classic Dr. Strangelove quote: "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here...This is the War Room!" reminds me of the classic War Games quote: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." which reminds me of the classic Planet of the Apes quote: "You Maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you all to hell!" which reminds me of the Soylent Green quote (but only because Charleton Heston screamed both of them) "Soylent Green is people!" which reminds me of the Barbra Streisand song "People, people who need people, are the luckiest people in the world" at which point it all (all referring to my brain) breaks down.
  • When Babs sang "the luckiest people in the world" maybe she meant the Irish. They have, by definition, the "luck of the Irish". (Oh wait, is that meant ironically?) The "Fighting Irish", however, are the Notre Dame football team. Except they don't pronounce it like the French - it's "Note-Er Daime". I suppose metre and meter is the same sort of thing. There are 201.168 meters in a furlong, and one meter in the cupboard under the stairs. The furlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. This was standardised to be exactly 40 rods. It is also 1/200,000th of the earths circumference.
  • Circumference is defined as the distance around a closed curve. This thread has more curves than a bowl full of tennis balls, which reminds me that my Border Collie loves her new dog ball launcher. At the end of the movie, Gattaca, a scifi revolving around the topic of eugenics, Jerome immolates himself as Vincent's shuttle launches. A less grisly launch is this year's publication of Lightspeed, an online science fiction magazine. Every week, Lightspeed will publish a free story, along with essays that explore themes related to the stories. Speaking of stories, Hom, I liked yours.
  • There are also some good stories at Shareable Futures.
  • I am currently inspired to do a lot of this, so... Circumference: To hold a conference at Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey's. Furlong: A shaggy dog. (Not a story) Singularity: Operatic slapstick. Random: A stupid foot race.
  • *slaps forehead* *falls backward*
  • Forehead: Oral sex on a golf course. Backward: The part of a hospital that treats spinal problems.
  • Why, you little...!!!
  • I can't help but compare this WE (World Ear) story by Dickinson with the classic dystopian novelWe by Zamyatin. Only in the case of the classic story, people were lining up to have their creative individuality removed with a brain operation, while in this new story, an internet-like implant has been removed out of necessity... Ironically, choosing to be unfree was, for Zamyatin, the last gasp of freedom, but in Dickinson's story, to be made to be free without personal resources sounds like the last gasp of tyranny. *Where's that confounded SPOILER?*
  • Harrison Bergernon loves you, Dan.
  • I've been spoiled by too much SciFi too. I'm seeing my future from the fictional past rapidly approaching.