It would be naive to assume that Avatar only works because of the technology. There is little doubt that, in this case, the 3D aspect enhances the filmic experience. However, as Michael Bay and George Lucas, and countless others, remind us too often, placing most of the focus of a film on CGI and visual effects while neglecting everything else, can have disastrous consequences.
James Cameron, while not king of the world, is probably one of Hollywood’s princes of perfection. His reputation as a very hard man to please make him a respected, yet also apparently often disliked director who is not afraid to ask for expensive sets to be completely redone in a very short amount of time and for staff members to be dismissed right away if they fail to comply. It is somewhat unfortunate that these types, whether in Hollywood or not, are often rewarded for being unpleasant but the positive side is that it is exactly what makes them difficult that also allows them to create interesting works.

Avatar provides a fairly average story with extremely cliche characters. The acting is nothing special, the soundtrack is over the top, even a bit annoying, and some of the dialogues are ‘cheesy’. So what works? As mentioned earlier, despite the fact that the CGI and visual effects are of the highest caliber, this in itself is usually not enough to carry a film. Cameron has succeeded in creating an overall experience that is so enthralling that the mediocre aspect of some of its parts is forgiven. A bit like Star Wars in 1977, a film which after all was fairly amateurish at times, Avatar immerses us in a very believable world of fantasy, legends and myths. The acting may not make much sense but the details of the world do. It is this meticulously crafted visual and non-visual environment that succeeds in transporting us to a very interesting place for 160 minutes or so.

While i like intelligent, cerebral and artsy cinema, i also love when cinema just entertains and when it does it well. Avatar has sucked all that it could from the little book of entertaining cinema and offers perhaps the best visual effects ever created on film. But more importantly, it works thanks to the clarity of an artistic vision and thanks to the perfectionism of James Cameron.

Surrogates raises some very interesting issues but unfortunately, does not do it in a very effective way. There is very little differentiating this film from the the average Sci-Fi/Action blockbuster. A bit less action and a few more thought-provoking moments perhaps, but still too much bad acting, poor casting and awfully written scenes that make you gasp in astonishment at such lack of respect for plausibility and consistency.

Nonetheless, for anyone interested in transhumanism, Surrogates will be somewhat stimulating. Human enhancement and the rise of artificial intelligence, along with the explosion of Genetics, Information Systems and Nanotechnology (the so-called GRIN technologies), will lead in the near future to some of the most complicated and important ethical questions that mankind has ever faced.

Surrogates describes a future where people’s only way of interacting with others and with their surroundings is through the use of Surrogates, robotic or cybernetic entities that look like younger versions of their human owners. All one needs to do is to lay at home on a comfy sofa, put on a not-very-fancy headpiece and one is immediately connected to their avatar and thus, to their ‘immortal’ younger, better looking and stronger selves. The difference with today’s virtual reality or simply net-based avatars is that these surrogates ‘live’ in the ‘real’ world, although once again, we start getting into all kinds of speculations about what real is. Surrogates is about the future but it is a critique of the present. Our increasing dependence on social media and virtual worlds is turning our conception of the word reality upside down. More and more people are choosing web and virtual-based reality over traditional reality. Some people are scared, while the younger generation plunges head fist into this new way of socializing and of experiencing life. We can not stop this pattern but we can discuss its ethics and fight for ways to make it better. Ultimately, virtual reality will become a natural part of existence, perhaps the only one and we will learn to upload our minds and to exist outside the confines of our fragile and limited bodies. After all, humankind, on the whole, has always wished for immortality and this is one way to do it.
But Surrogates does not discuss the possibility of mind uploading and presents us with a world that seems content to rot away at home while their Surrogates live on their behalf. I find that there is a logic flaw here, unless, of course, one can ultimately leave their dying body behind and just continue to live on by going from one new Surrogate model to the next. The film does not go into this level of detail - this is after all a big budget action film - which is a shame as the concept of Surrogates is fascinating.

Small budget films have the advantage of needing to attract smaller audiences to recoup their costs. As such, i would imagine, it must release some pressure to conform and compromise while at the same time enabling the type of creativity that often comes only with severe budgetary constraints. The majority of good Sci-Fi films these days appear to be associated with lower budgets, as directors and writers attempt to tell real stories around serious and contemporary issues. Science Fiction was not always the stuff of explosions and superficial entertainment, but the past 20 years or so have certainly given the genre a terrible reputation. We have Hollywood to thank for this, although we must not forget that once in a while the machinery can still produce quality films.

But if Hollywood continues to mainly spit out one brainless action and explosion-driven film after the next, other countries, such as Japan, Korea, Spain and France, unable (or unwilling) to compete on budget terms, sometimes produce very interesting, more character-driven Sci-Fi pieces. And recently, District 9, a South African production, showed us that a USD 30 million budget can go a long way if the film is built on a good base of intelligent screenplay and solid acting.

Now, from Mexico, a country that has in the past few years produced some pretty remarkable films, directors and actors, comes Sleep Dealer, another low budget film that is filled with good intents and is more entertaining than 99% of what comes out these days and pretends to be Sci-Fi. Like District 9, Sleep Dealer attempts to tackle lots of contemporary issues on a background of social criticism.

Sleep Dealer tells the story of a young restless Mexican who, wanting to be connected to the world rather than to continue living the life of his elders, heads to Tijuana to work in a Sleep Dealer. Sleep Dealers are factories where workers are hooked up to virtual reality networks that allow them to provide work remotely for many US-based companies. In this not-too-distant future, the Mexican labor workers, still driven by the dream of a better life, are once again exploited but they never cross the border to the US, thereby ’solving’ one of North America’s most pressing social issue today, at least from a US point of view. Our protagonist realizes soon enough that the traditional land-based life that his family has been living for generations is perhaps not so bad after all, and that the capitalistic and technology-driven dreams that he and other people of his age harbor are based on deceit and empty values.

So immigration, capitalism, social movement and technology are the overarching themes of Sleep Dealer. Within these, smaller thematic issues are depicted, such as mind uploading, water scarcity, DNA fingerprinting, memory ownership, death as a spectacle and the rise of shock-based entertainment, threat of bacterial infections, and more…

Too much for one film probably, but Sleep Dealer manages to pull it off reasonably well. Like with most films, we are reminded of many previous Sci-Fi efforts such as eXistenZ (1999) -virtual reality nodes as an extension of body and the experience as a drug-, Minorty Report (2002) -the visualization and interaction for memory viewing-, Code 46 (2003)-social mobility/division-, Strange Days (1995) and Total Recall (1990)-memories for sale, and even Blade Runner (1982)-Tijuana in Sleep Dealer is reminiscent of Ridley Scott’s Los Angeles- and Babel (2006)-are we getting closer to one another or further away?-. But whereas some films tend to just rehash or steal bits and pieces from previous works, others use the influence intelligently and create something new and fresh out of it. This is the case for Sleep Dealer.

Although i may not agree with its seemingly very black and white critic of technology, and although the film feels a bit amateurish at times, i still very much enjoyed what Sleep Dealer is trying to tell us and how it does it.

This two hour pilot for the new series Caprica surprised me. I certainly was not expecting Battlestar Galactica all over again, but i also was not prepared for such a ‘character-driven’ experience. I use the term loosely here, and mainly to highlight the move away from space as the main narrative background. Intended to gain a wider audience, Caprica may also end up leaving some BSG fans behind…

Caprica takes place on a planet that, aside from a couple of minute differences, looks exactly like our earth. Its main city, Caprica, is any 1950s North American city with a few futuristic skyscrapers added here and there for good measure. I read that the idea of using the 1950s as an influence was to emphasize the fact that all this is taking place in our distant past but to nonetheless convey a sense of excitement towards the future. Personally, i found the production design of Caprica to be one of its weakest points. There is an underwhelming sense of lack of imagination as we stroll through streets and alleys that look like the types we would see in any other TV show. I understand that Caprica takes place in our past, but that knowledge is not enough to overcome the disconnect that one experiences when seeing our present when one is in fact thinking about either the distant future or the distant past. The fact that Caprica and BSG take place millions of years ago is already quite a challenge from a production design standpoint, one that i have discussed already in a couple of BSG posts. But in Caprica, it has become worse. The creators did not even see it fit to show us a game of Pyramid. Instead, we just see a few foamy pads laying around while around 70 extras jump up and down in what looked to be an ice-hockey arena. This is of course intentional, the producers and writers either held up by budgetary constraints or intent on ‘keeping it real’ in an effort to cater to a larger audience than the usual Sci-Fi fare traditionally does. In the end, i see no reason for Caprica to look like 1950s New York or Chicago, as i saw no reason for pens, paper, cancer, cigarettes and many other things to exist in the universe of BSG. One can not have invented interstellar and faster-than-light travel and still be bogged down by so many 20th century human weaknesses and memes. And this applies to design and architecture as well. I also felt uneasy by some of the casting choices, including Eric Stoltz as Daniel Graystone, the driven and selfish scientist who brings about the beginning of the end. Stoltz failed to convince me as a technical genius and as a father, even as a bad one.

A week after having watched Virtuality, it was interesting to see again virtual reality being depicted on TV. Ron Moore has been recycling some of his ideas since in both pilots, a character dies but continues to exist in virtual reality. And in both cases, VR is used pretty much as a recreational tool where a simple headset is enough to transport the ‘user’ into an exact replica of the real world, whatever that real world may be, all five senses included. But Caprica goes much further and attempts to explore some potential societal and moral implications of not only virtual reality but also of immortality, transhumanism, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. The theme of religion is emphasized from the very start and Dr Graystone’s experiments provide the required foundation for the standard science vs religion debate. Where the debate becomes more interesting than usual is in Dr Graystone’s ideas about merging (mind uploading?) the encoded data of his daughter (drawing on current lifelogging trends - blogs, social networks, data capture…) with an AI-enabled robotic shell. The potential result is immortality for a new a type of being. These concepts are not too far-fetched and many people today in transhumanist circles are working on such ideas. So credit to Ron Moore for keeping it believable. I suppose Mary Shelley did not come up with the idea for Frankenstein. She must have found some old book somewhere telling tales of immortality based on Caprican rather than Summerian or Egyptian mythology.

In spite of what i consider to be weaknesses in the production values and in the casting, the pilot for Caprica had plenty of interesting moments and clearly warrants further viewing. It is hard to imagine that the Cylons were created only 60 years before the fall of Caprica, but i am sure the creators will find a satisfactory way to put it all together.

I can’t claim to have the pulse of the younger generation but i sincerely hope that Push has not been received too warmly by teenage girls in awe of Chris Evans or by teenage boys who may find the thought of watching Dakota Fanning walking for 90 mins around Hong Kong with a very short skirt on appealing. I am actually wondering if reaching for the teenage market was in fact the intention of the director, Paul McGuigan, or if it just seems this way due to the mediocrity of this film.

Push is one of those movies that is so bad that one can’t help but to wonder how it was even greenlighted in the first place. One can also legitimately ask how a director who, although far from being considered good, has managed to make a couple of not-too-terrible films, can so easily spiral out of control into an abyss of cliches, predictability and, well, stupidity…It is as if his entire carreer had just been erased and he was back in film school, trying to make the cool film that everyone will be impressed with. Except that, because he is a mediocre student, his film is the last thing from cool and instead is filled with atrocious acting, silly and amateurish editing and obvious and poorly chosen music.

Because the subject matter of paranormal abilities is burried so deep below several layers of trash, there is no opportunity to even discuss it in the context of this film.

As a critic, i know my limitations. That is, i must remain aware that directors create something and that critics do little other than praise or bash what has been created already. I respect the act of creation (and of creativity) and i keep it in mind at all times when i appraise a film. However, there are times when even this awareness is not enough to keep me from thinking that with the same resources and with a short training, i could have done better.

I picked up Altered Carbon with the expectation of reading another Neuromancer or Snow Crash but felt somehow a bit blasé while reading it, as i did when i read The Demolished Man. Perhaps William Gibson is right and the future has become such an integral part of our present that there is little left to explore in terms of near-future Sci-Fi or Cyberpunk. Actually, no, I don’t agree with Gibson and I believe that there are still plenty of opportunities for Sci-Fi writers to mesmerize us with speculations about the future of the human race.

Altered Carbon is a Cyber-Noir that takes place 500 years from now. Takeshi Kovacs is a reluctant private eye, a mercenerary of sorts who gets downloaded left and right to do the types of jobs that others can not do.  In this case, he is downloaded in somone else’s body in San Francisco, and is hired by a rich man who wants Kovacs to investigate why this man has no recollection of his own recent suicide, and why he would have done such a thing in the first place.

A few planets have been colonized, people wear neurachems (jacked up nervous systems), AIs hold various jobs in society such as running hotels, the rich have become more or less immortal thanks to the ability to upload themselves into new sleeves (bodies) as they see fit and much of the communication takes place virtually (as does torture and imprisonment when combined with mind uploading). But the rest is pretty much 20th century: people still need their coffee to get going, they lament their nicotine addiction, they shoot people with fairly old-fashion guns and society as a whole seems to function very much according to our values today. Which, in my opinion, makes Altered Carbon a bit of a disjointed experience.

Richard Morgan does a good job at bringing the noir element into Kovacs’ investigation, although there is a bit of a gratuitous penchant for sadism and hardcore violence. The plot is tightly weaved and so elaborate that it becomes slightly confusing at times. In the end, Altered Carbon is a solid novel, especially for a first novel, but there was not enough in it to keep me very interested. Since the rights to the book have been bought by Hollywood, i can imagine very well this being turned into a near-future noir flick. It has all the right ingredients: the tough guy with a soft spot, the mysterious rich man who hires him, the two femmes fatales with their own agendas, the non-stop and sometimes convenient flow of scenes that allow our private eye to move forward with his investigation, lots of action and just the right amount of technological gimmicry to entertain the audience without breaking the budget. Unfortunately, i have a feeling it won’t be another Blade Runner.

A regular topic on this blog is that of bad versus good trash. What makes, for example, Eagle Eye (2008) and The Day the Earth Stool Still (2008) bad trash and what makes Wanted good trash? Why are the cliches acceptable in the later but not in the first two? Even though there are many reasons why a film can be bad, there is however usually one overarching common reason: bad trash films tend to take themselves seriously and try to reach emotional and intellectual heights that are far beyond what they can achieve based on the resources available (such as skills and intelligence of the director and actors and quality of the screenplay). There is nothing more annoying than directors who have no understanding of their abilities and who end up inserting childish and immature emotional and philosophical nonsense in their action flicks.
Good trash, on the other hand, tends to know its limitations and has the intelligence to try not to pretend that it can be more than what it actually is.

Thus, Wanted does not attempt to tell us about emotions or human frailty or love or what makes the world go round or this or that. Wanted just wants to entertain through action, dark humour and visual effects. It makes no apology for what it is and it does not try to marry this action with any kind of depth; it is what i would call good and honest superficial entertainment.

One feels several influences in this film about an average young man (played perfectly by James McAvoy) who learns that he is the son of an assassin, himself a member of a secret guild that dates back hundreds of years. Part of the overall concept and many of the action scenes are reminiscent of The Matrix (1999), some of the gun-fighting sequences bring Equilibrium (2002) to mind and one can detect attempts here and there at a bit of a Flight Club (1999) pace and feel. Other action flicks will undoubtedly be mentioned in connection with Wanted, but in the end, Timur Bekmambetov who previously directed Night Watch (2004), manages to come up with enough visual candy, good acting, great action sequences and just the right amount of dark humour to make Wanted a fun experience.

Perhaps they should have added a disclaimer that no rats were harmed during the filming of this movie…

Burning Man changed my life. I can’t really pinpoint exactly how it did that, but I know that the first time I went there in 1999, something happened and I was able to reach into a part of me which I either never knew was there or knew was there but was never able to reach. I believe this is not an uncommon outcome, and that most people who attend the yearly festival in the Nevada desert experience something that touches them profoundly.
I managed to go two more times, in 2001 and 2002, but it never really felt the same. The magic and awe were still present, but some of the novelty and beauty had started to wane.

There are many readings of this cyber post-modern hippie festival that started on the beaches of San Francisco in the late 1980’s. Some see it as a release from society, some as a purging of their inner demons, some as a Disneyland of experimentation, others as a place of artistic freedom and beauty, or as a convergence of consciousness, and finally, for some, it’s just the perfect place to get high and to get laid, while mixing it up with desert survival camping. In a word, this is an event that probably could only take place in the US.

The beauty of Burning Man lies in this diversity of possibilities. There is something there for everyone. It is like a beautiful tree covered with many different types of fruits, all easily accessible and all ripe for the picking. One only needs to choose what suits one’s taste the best.
But one of the most magical aspects of the festival, at least until about 10 years ago, and even then, the old timers were already talking about how the festival was slowly losing its identity to the ‘weekend tourists’, is how it reminds one of the pressures and constraints of our society by removing them. Unlike more traditional festivals, Burning Man allows one to contemplate an alternative society, one where people exist to be kind to each other (on the most part) and to share a common ideal and consciousness. Moreover, this is a society that does not judge and does not, directly or indirectly, tell its citizens how to behave, how to dress, or how to exist. In return, the people choose willingly to be free and to act accordingly but to never harm others in the process.

One of the most hideous obstacles to our freedom in today’s society is the absurdity of consensual crimes, those actions that do not impact anyone but the person engaging in this action, but yet are deemed criminal by society. It is a wonderful and exhilarating experience to be free from the judgement of institutions and that of other people. I believe that one does not truly know what the impact is of such liberation on one’s psyche, personality and behaviour until one experiences it. And I believe that most people, if they allow such a freedom to wash over them, will surprise themselves and realize, if only a little bit, that our minds and bodies have become corrupted by the demands of our modern world. Burning Man allows for a temporary respite from the Matrix in which we live, a vacation for the senses and for the mind and a new way of looking at the world. Who doesn’t need this once in a while?

At the risk of losing whatever little credibility I have in the dark and obscure circles of amateur film critique, I am going to come out and say that Tom Cruise is an interesting actor to watch. I am not going to go as far as Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian who stated that he is a brilliant character actor and a great actor, but I think Tom Cruise deserves more credit than he usually gets. His off-screen antics have gotten in the way of people’s fair appraisal of his acting talents. And while these are still limited (I noticed years ago that one of his favourite methods for acting surprise and disbelief is to repeat his lines twice, a la Jimmy Two Times), he is nonetheless able to sometimes deliver some exciting performances as he did in Born on the 4th of July (1989), Magnolia (1999), and Lions for Lambs (2007).

In Vanilla Sky, based on the better Spanish film called Open your Eyes (1997), Cruise shows that he is not afraid to be a bit more edgy, although, in all fairness, we are still talking about a Cameron Crowe film. The first half of the film is artificial and annoying, depicting mostly an exasperating romance between a rich and vain playboy played by Cruise and a Euro artsy-fartsy girl played by the other Cruz, Penelope (whose acting charisma only seems to come out whenever she is not playing in an American film). This hollow yarn appears to have been taken over the top deliberately (I hope) to provide a starker contrast to the second half. Cameron Diaz’ scenes offer the only interesting moments until the film kicks into second gear, at which point Cruise starts to let loose and takes us into darker and edgier territory.

Attention Spoilers Ahead
The reason I enjoyed Vanilla Sky is not because I thought it would be interesting to be the only person in the world who does. Rather, it is because it deals with a subject matter rarely encountered in cinema, at least in mainstream cinema: using technology to defeat death. This is the story of a dead man who has used his wealth to be preserved cryogenically until, at some point in the future, technological progress will allow for his body to be brought back to life. Now, this would make for a pretty boring film if this man were not able to continue ‘living’ in a simulated world that feels exactly like reality. Is it not clear how exactly the technology to enable a dying person to upload his mind into a perfect virtual reality has come to exist so quickly before the technology to keep one alive after a particular car crash…but who cares, it still allows for some interesting speculations, provided that one enjoys thinking about such things.

Cryonics may still seem like the stuff of Science Fiction to most people, but several companies today offer such services, although without the mind uploading bit which I suspect will take a while longer to develop, and their mastery of the process is improving every year. For around 120,000 dollars one can get his body preserved with the hope that some future technology, probably nano-based, will be able to bring that body back to life, along, somehow and hopefully, with the consciousness that used to accompany it. This may not be as crazy as it sounds. Rapid and mind-boggling advances related to what are known as the GRIN technologies (Genetics, Robotic & Cognitive, Information Systems and Nanotechnology) are reshaping the health and socio-political landscape of our society on an exponential scale. What we have achieved technologically in the past is only a fraction of what we will achieve in the future. According to Ray Kurzweil, who believes in the coming of The Singularity, the exponential increase in technological advancement that our world is witnessing means that we will not experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century. Instead, we will experience ‘20,000 years of progress, or about 100 thousand times greater than what was achieved in the 20th century’ (Kurzweil. The Singularity is Near. 2005). At this rate, who knows what will be possible in 500 or 2000 years. Therefore, no one can say for sure today that reviving the frozen dead will not be possible in the future. Personally, I see no reason to doubt that it will happen. My concerns are more based around the difficulty of bringing back a person’s consciousness. What would be the point of coming back if one has no recollection of the past and of one’s self? Traditional reincarnation can already provide for this, so Cryonics, or a field working in association with it, need to go beyond and allow one to preserve his or her self throughout the ages. But memory implants, mind uploading or a yet-to-be-thought-about technology should overcome this obstacle, leaving only ethicists, sociologists and politicians to debate the pros and cons and the impact of such a massive revolution on society as a whole.

Vanilla Sky is not a great film. It is probably not even a good film. But I found it very entertaining nonetheless and the possibilities associated with keeping one’s mind and thoughts alive in a simulation of the real world until that person’s body can be brought back to life, left me thinking and wondering.

Spin, which won the Hugo Award in 2005, is a novel that often feels more like speculative fiction than science fiction. Like much of the work of Kim Stanley Robinson and of Margaret Atwood, Spin takes place in a hypothetical present, and uses current themes and concepts and a solid narrative with strongly developed characters as a backbone for more fictional and apocalyptic speculations.

These speculations revolve around the unexplained appearance of a membrane around the Earth, apparently placed by some extra terrestrial intelligence whose motives will only be revealed at the end of the book. Outside of the membrane, the universe expands at a rapidly accelerating rate, implying that without the membrane, the Earth will quickly fry under the rays of our exploding sun. However, the origin of the membrane remains unclear to the people of the Earth who are condemned to live without understanding why, how, and especially how long. How long until the membrane disappears, signifying the end of the human race?

It is within this existential end-of-the-world context that Wilson develops the story of three friends whose lives will evolve differently under the constant presence and threat of the membrane. Each will use the inescapable uncertainty and ambiguity that now permeates life on earth to make different decisions and to interact with the world according to their own motivations. Yet, their path will cross often, and the truth behind the appearance of the membrane will bring them together in their search for answers.

Despite the fact that Wilson brings additional themes to his story such as conscious self-replicating nanomachines, humanity’s depletion of Earth’s natural resources, the terraforming and colonization of Mars (the depiction of which is in my mind one of Spin’s few weak points), and the connection of various parts of the universe through wormhole-like gates, it is the tale of the three friends confronting the realities of a doomed world that dominates Spin. It is not often that a Science Fiction writer tries and succeeds in bringing such depth to his or her characters. Wilson has done just that with Spin and has done it on a canvas of interesting apocalyptic conjectures and ideas that are reminiscent of Greg Bear’s The Forge of God.

The French have a love affair with Science Fiction.

Along with that of the US and of Japan, French comic books, known by the more credible name of BDs (Bande Dessinee) and which can be found in abundance across French stores, are a continuous source of inspiration and creativity for artists and Science Fiction lovers everywhere. Ridley Scott has claimed that much of his inspiration for Blade Runner (1982) came from the work of Moebius in the 1970s and the rest of the crew of Les Humanoides Associes and of Metal Hurlant, the influential comic book that would later become Heavy Metal in the US .

Yet, when it comes to literature, aside from the common and more or less accurate claim that Jules Verne invented Sci-Fi, France has rarely produced science fiction writers of quality. Perhaps an obsession with comic books (considered by some to be the 9th art of France) is a way to compensate for this lack since a genre such as science fiction could probably never gain enough credibility in the country that produced Voltaire, Hugo and Balzac and where the ‘integrity’ of the art of literature is defended with so much fervor and passion.

A similar lack is evident in the history of French cinema. With the exception of Melies, L’Herbier, Jeunet and Caro and the two attempts by Godard and Truffaut, France’s sci fi output when it comes to cinema has been less than meager. But France clearly loves science fiction as seen through the lens of the cinematic medium. Sci Fi flicks, the majority of which come from the US or Asia, are always prominently displayed on the shelves of French stores, reflecting their capacity for attracting a large number of buyers. Cinema sci-fi magazines such as Ecran Fantastique and Mad Movies have been holding their own next to Premiere and Cahiers du Cinema for many years now and, contrary to what many may think outside of France, French TV runs a fair amount of Hollywood trash, including sci-fi.

On the subject of trash, which is regrettably often interchangeable with sci-fi, Luc Besson, the most American French director of the 90s, released The Fifth Element in 1997. Despite being a silly hollow film with high production values, The Fifth Element, along with much of Besson’s other trash inspired productions, has had an impact on the French collective psyche. Or perhaps it simply exploited contemporary social trends and gave a certain part of France the release it needed from the shackles of its past. Unfortunately, while providing some of the younger French filmmakers with the ability to think beyond France and the possibility for reaching out to new influences and styles, this break in tradition in French film making, this popularization of a previously somewhat elitist medium, has so far not resulted in anything good at all. It is mainly with its ‘traditional’ films that France continues to impress.

Films such as Chrysalis (2007), Renaissance (2006), Immortel (2004), Dante 01 (2008) and Vidocq (2001) are beautiful to look at but are for the most part completely devoid of substance. Their comic book approach explores new visual opportunities but forgets basic film making principles such as strong acting, appropriate casting, realistic and intelligent dialogues, proper script and scene development and professional editing, all of which are essential to the process of making a film of quality (Dante 01 stands slightly above the rest in this regard). Banlieue 13 (2004) marries the athleticism of Parkour with the ever increasing popularity of martial arts in France, but fails on every other levels. Babylon AD, the film supposedly reviewed here. is a travesty of a movie, an overindulgent and amateurish farce that deserves to join the Olympe of the worst that Hollywood has ever produced. Directed by Matthieu Kassovitz, the French actor and director who somehow managed to direct the gripping and enthralling La Haine (1995), it touches on futuristic subjects such as artificial intelligence, cloning, human enhancement, reanimation, overpopulation and global warming, but it does so in a way that is unbelievably childish and ignorant. I can’t help but thinking about how Kubrick had done his research to prepare for his next film, Napoleon, by filling entire rooms with books, paraphernalia and by slowing indexing on paper cards every piece of information he had ever read or obtained about his subject matter. Kubrick might be an extreme case, but it seems to me that any filmmaker should at least do a minimum of research before tackling a subject.

Babylon AD is another failure for French Sci-Fi cinema, sadly following in the footsteps of the films mentioned above, but also of previous efforts by French directors working within the Hollywood establishment: Catwoman (2004 - Pitof), Hulk 2 (2008 - Letterier), Alien Resurection (1997 - Jeunet), Gothika (2003 - Kassovitz).

There is something about thrillers and winter, or at least about psychological suspense and winter. There have been plenty of effective thrillers that take place in warm exotic places, but when it comes to the bizarre and the psychologically disturbing, there is nothing like a cold, dark and wintry setting to enhance the fright factor and overall unsettling effect. The Jacket, Insomnia, Misery, A Simple Plan, and Affliction come to mind, as do The Shining and Les Rivieres Pourpres.

This second film based on the successful and inspirational series of the same name that ran from 1993 to 2002, has left a lot of its paranormal frills at the door and instead uses a trimmed down, modest approach that revolves around Stem Cell Therapy, genetic engineering and organ trafficking. It also offers the usual Mulder Scully debate between science and religion, rationalism and empiricism and whether any of it is in fact enough to satisfy the need that humans have to believe in something to explain what they don’t understand…

The X Files 2 is one of those films that in spite of being well crafted and entertaining for two hours somehow manages to leave the viewer with very little at the end.

The parallels with The X Files are unavoidable. A wide reaching conspiracy of paranormal and unusual phenomenon that appear to have their source in the not so legal scientific activities of one of the world’s biggest corporations; A female FBI agent who seems more than willing to embrace the unusual and to accept that the truth can sometimes come from the bizarre and the abnormal; and an unwilling partner who provides the required dose of skepticism and reductionist rationalism.

Yet, J.J. Abrams, the producer of the new hot series ‘Fringe’, and the brain behind the hit TV series ‘Lost’, is right when he states that Fringe is not The X Files. Based on the first episode, Fringe is clearly far inferior to its predecessor.

There is something about this new series that feels a bit artificial and stitched together. It is as if the producer had assembled a group of the best writers of hip TV series, and ask them to come up with a new hip TV show, using as reference the Big Book of Hip TV Series Writing. The result is entertaining enough but it does not have enough to take it to that cult levels status. Many characters feel cliché, like the black tough FBI boss and the reluctant super intelligent soon-to-be lover, and the action seems hurried, occasionally moving the plot in awkward fashion from one scene to the next. The editing has completely transcended time, but unfortunately, this does not serve any deeper purpose than to get this first episode finished within the allocated time frame. In addition, some of the ideas brought forth are simply not explored realistically enough. A scene reminiscent of Altered States in which the lead character is immersed in a tank while on LSD feels very tame and the experience conveniently over and done with in a matter of minutes, as required by the narrative (after all, she has only 24 hours to catch the bad guy!). Haven’t these writers ever read that taking LSD is an experience that lasts for several hours, if not days? In addition, most of the scenes involving the scientist, a genius before his time we are told, are also not very plausible, from the speed at which he is let out of jail and allowed to reassemble his lab at Harvard, to the nonchalance with which he operates computers that did not exist when he was incarcerated. In summary, it all feels just very convenient.

Still, episode 1 has built enough of a mystery around the activities of the strange corporation that one is compelled to know more. One can only hope that the writing of future episodes will have improved.

With the exception of Back to the Future (1985), i can’t recall a film using time travel as a premise and not completely dividing audiences and critics alike. In fact, it would seem that time travel has become a clear recipe for automatic B movie classification in the minds of most people (films such as The Butterfly Effect (2004) do little to help this bad reputation). Since the majority of the world continues to regard the possibility of time travel as pure fantasy, it is indeed difficult to imagine why these same people would approach a time travel film seriously. And that is unfortunate, since this immediate negation of the possibility of time travel clearly has an effect on one’s ability to assess these films in a fair manner.

With The Jacket for example, a film that deals with a hospitalized gulf war veteran being able to project himself into the future after being injected with hallucinogenic drugs and being locked up in a drawer (this strange treatment, concocted by a mad doctor played by Kris Kristofferson, is part of a shock therapy for violent patients), most critics seemed unable to take seriously the idea of time traveling from one’s mind and by being placed in a tight and closed-in environment such as a drawer. I suppose some kind of nice helper device such as a time machine or a tunnel wrapped in plastic foil, or even a never fully explained elaborate apparatus might make it a bit easier, but a drawer just doesn’t cut it. Also, there is the usual tendency to identify time travel inconsistencies and to seek a clean resolution without any open issues or questions. Any loose end that remains at the end only fills the already uncertain viewer with additional doubt and ambiguity.

I realized some time ago that, not only is time travel possible (after all, who are you not to trust Albert Einstein?), but also that we no longer need to be afraid of inconsistencies. As the theory of parallel universes grows in popularity, it provides an interesting way to approach time travel and to envision different scenarios playing into the future. In The Jacket, the character played by Adrian Brody seems to be capable of transporting himself into the future, or perhaps, into a parallel universe, with only his brain as a catalyst. The drawer and the drugs are enablers (this also formed the basis for the excellent 1980 film Altered States), as is the fact that his brain structure has probably been rearranged by the wound shot he received during the war, but there is no external device that helps him achieve this. Only his mind. Is this far fetched? Perhaps a bit but that does not make it impossible. As i explained in my review of Jumper (2008) and of The Connectivity Hypothesis, there is plenty about the mind we do not know and have forgotten. Could the unlocking of various regions of our brains allow us to teleport ourselves or to time travel? After all, there is mounting evidence that ESP, telepathy, levitation, telekinesis and other supposedly ‘paranormal’ activities might in fact be the products of minds that have learned to reprogram or restructure themselves, or perhaps even more simply, to open themselves to long lost possibilities.

The Jacket has some good performances and an appealing cinematography. Directed by the artistically inclined John Maybury, the film is slow and deliberate, which, again, if one is not buying into the material, will make it seem arrogant and tedious. Shot in the cold snowy winters of Quebec and Scotland, the atmosphere is heavy and dreary and adds nicely to the feelings of madness and confusion experienced by the lead protagonist. A better than average film, the Jacket falls somewhere between the scary intensity of Jacob’s Ladder (1990), the intriguing modernity of Donnie Darko (2001) and the strong visuality of Stay (2005).

A couple of interesting things happened shortly before i left my flat to go watch Wall-E (2008).

First, i finished reading Citizen Cyborg by James Hughes. The book, which i will soon review on this blog, makes a compelling case for Democratic Transhumanism, and as a subset of this, for extending certain rights to non-Humans (be it Apes, Dolphins, Elephants, Robots or Aliens…), under the argument that we have an obligation to treat anyone or anything capable of feelings and of self-awareness in the same manner (or almost the same manner, depending on various criteria) that we would (should) treat our fellow human beings. The second thing that happened is that i came across two very recent articles that proved timely and appropriate in their relevance to Pixar’s new film: Emotional robots in the spotlight and When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans.

As a Democratic Transhumanist and Technogaianist who grew up absorbing large quantities of Science Fiction cinema and literature, i have never felt anything remotely bizarre or ‘abnormal’ in the idea of giving some human rights (and one day, equal rights) to non-human creatures. It is a very arrogant notion to think that only human beings deserve the right to not be tortured, beaten or imprisoned. All animals today deserve at least to be treated with fairness and in a similar fashion to the way we (should) treat human beings who suffer from mental or physical handicaps. And the more intelligent animals are and then become (through genetic engineering), the more rights they should receive. The same applies to robots. Many people continue to harbor negative feelings towards robots, and most cinematic or media representations of robots and artificial intelligences still tend to focus on dystopic visions and worse-case scenarios for the future, but as soon as you place these people in front of a little machine that makes cute sounds or starts to even remotely act human (Honda’s ASIMO or Sony’s Qrio for example), their fear begins to alleviate and the possibility suddenly arises that this machine might be worthy of our empathy after all. As machines become more intelligent and more human, we will learn to treat them with respect, and one day, we might even forget that they are machines (overcoming in the process the challenges posed by the theory of The Uncanny Valley). This process will not be easy and we can expect to meet many Luddites and robot-haters (human-racists) along the way, the type of narrow-minded and hateful people that Steven Spielberg portrayed in his film Artificial Intelligence: A.I (2001). But ultimately, old-style humans will become just one of several types of creatures existing on Earth and on other planets, and issues of rights will turn out to be increasingly relevant and important.

Enters WALL-E, Pixar’s latest magical creation, a little box of a robot (who looks uncannily like E.T (1982)) designed to collect the waste that has covered the surface of the Earth. Humans have long left the planet, unable to co-exist with the garbage that they created. Instead, they now live in gigantic spaceships, their every need attended to by machines, and their ‘humanity’ slowly disappearing as they become fat, illiterate and totally devoid of social aptitudes. This dystopic representation of the future is very much based on early 21st century fears regarding our abuse of the environment and of natural resources, obesity, sedentary lifestyles, addiction to the internet, and loss of old-fashioned values and traditions, but it fails to take into account the technological advances that will make some of these problems obsolete. Still, these issues are today very real, and even if progress helps us overcome them in the future, they must nonetheless be addressed today. The pollution of our planet, for example, by our relentless need for energy and consumption, and by the greed of corporations, is slowly turning into a global catastrophe with potentially dire consequences for Earth and its inhabitants.

It is thus on this fairly bleak canvas that Pixar paints a love story between two robots who risk their lives to help bring life and humanity back to a desolate Earth. Pixar has repeatedly shown with Toy Story (1995), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), and Ratatouille (2007) that animation has the power to move adults and children alike and that animated films deserve to be given the same credit as non-animated features. With WALL-E, they manage to develop a powerful and extremely moving love story between two machines, and to raise several pertinent current issues in the process. Some have argued that the film loses some of its edge as it goes along, especially with its fairly cliché happy ending. However, and i like bleakness as much as the next Frenchman, i personally see WALL-E as a fairy tale that needs no apology for its happy resolution. Pixar already pushed the envelope plenty with this animated feature and I don’t think that keeping the bleakness going to the very end would have been appropriate. So simply let the joy and entertainment of ‘WALL-E the love story’ overcome you and view its morale as a call for awareness and action rather than as an apocalyptic message. Oh, and don’t forget: robots can be human too.

I once submitted several questions to the online discussion platform for social and environmental change www.droppingknowledge.org (a platform which I helped build). One of these questions raised the issue of whether it makes sense to spend so much money on space exploration when so much needs to be done on earth. I asked the question because this theme is of interest to me, although I have never believed that reducing our investment in space programs would directly and positively affect problems such as poverty or pollution. It is not simply more money that we need to overcome these problems. It is commitment and sacrifices of another kind. Nonetheless, I have encountered many social thinkers and environmentalists who see no purpose in space exploration and regard it as a waste of resources and while I can see their point to a certain extent, I remain fully convinced in the beauty and mystery of space exploration. I also believe that man’s destiny lies in the stars and that it will not be long before some of us begin to leave the blue planet behind.

In the Shadow of the Moon is a outstanding documentary film on the Apollo Space Program (the Mercury Program is briefly mentioned, referencing The Right Stuff, the book by Tom Wolf, which was turned into an excellent film by Philip Kaufman in 1983), narrated by the small group of men who had the privilege, and courage, to be the first humans to step on an alien world. The film is remarkably well put together and adroitly combines the fascinating tales and emotional insights of the astronauts with some amazing footage from NASA. It all feels so real that one immediately forgets that the film is an assemblage of original footage taken 35 years ago by cameras in cockpits or attached to spacecrafts and lunar modules. This footage is so skilfully intertwined with the narrative that one could be forgiven for thinking that the film crew shot additional footage to serve the storyline. What can not be forgiven however, after watching this brilliant and intensely touching film, is to continue thinking that the moon landings were a creation of the US government and that they in fact never took place. I believe there is plenty of proof in In the Shadow of the Moon to dispel any such absurd notions.

But what stands out the most for me after watching this film is the spirituality that these men developed after experiencing not only the beauty of the cosmos but also the serenity and fragility of our planet as seen from space. Some of the shots of Earth taken by the astronauts during the various Apollo flights have become omnipresent in our media over the past 30 years and, more importantly, have become synonymous in certain circles with a visualization of our planet as the self-regulating homeostatic organism named Gaia. First proposed by Dr. James Lovelock (who incidentally started developing his theory while working for NASA) in the early 70s, but already hinted at by Vladimir Vernadsky in the 1920s in his seminal book The Biosphere, the Gaia theory has been embraced by most people who feel empathy towards our planet and who regard it as a connected and living organism that deserves our respect and attention. And while Gaianism has been around for a while, and has even regained some of its momentum in the past few years due to the increased number of environmental issues facing our planet, a new belief has emerged, one that merges a deep respect for the Earth and all of its living creatures with a conviction in the powers of technology to help us overcome these issues and to, in the process, achieve a deeper spirituality and a global consciousness. Drawing, among others, on the work of the French monk Teilhard de Chardin who believed that technology would help us reach The Omega Point which is a higher state of global consciousness, these believers in TechnoGaianism, and i am one of them, tend to also be transhumanists with a social agenda and a democratic slant (James Hughes’ Citizen Cyborg is a particularly good reference on this latter subject).

Perhaps we do need Space and to get closer to the stars to remind us not to forget our duties towards Earth. Where some people might detect an irony or even an incompatibility between space exploration and the preservation and love of our planet, I see an interconnectedness following its logical progress and taking the human race to its next step in evolution, clearly driven for the first time in history by Man itself and in agreement with a desire to see all living and non living creatures existing in perfect harmony with this or any other planet and thus, with the cosmos as a whole.

Once in a while, one stumbles upon a work of such quality that one cannot help but to be baffled at how such a work could escape one’s notice for so long. Diaspora, written in 1997 by Greg Egan, is one of the most powerful, mind bending and far reaching book I have ever read.

As I have posted several times before, one of the drawbacks of many Sci-Fi representations and stories brought to the silver screen, is the difficulty in reaching the right balance between depicting a credible future, sometimes a distant future, while at the same time preserving some sense of ‘normality’ as well as traditional frames of references in order to not alienate the viewer. Unfortunately, this balance is rarely reached and most of Hollywood’s visualizations tend to be very limited and writers or directors seem content to show us the same old humans with the same old problems, values and physical characteristics, regardless of when in the future the story might be occurring. Just place these archaic visions of the past in front of a couple of futuristic looking buildings, add some fancy cars with doors that slide vertically and complete the package with the occasional gismo to obtain your average run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi flick.

While Sci-Fi literature offers many possibilities for more credible, fleshed out and geeky visions of the future, there has still been an over-reliance on ‘traditional’ humans as lead or even as only characters. This seems to have changed in the past few years, and the implications of Transhumanisn are increasingly being used as material for many Sci-Fi books. In Diaspora, Greg Egan describes in great detail how the ‘human race’ might split and evolve towards a post human future. While the process of becoming more than human will most likely be very gradual, with humans combining with machines and vice versa (a process that has already started with the adoption of pacemakers, Cochlear implants, prosthetic limbs, or even the mobile phone which has become a natural extension of ourselves), Egan portrays a future a few hundred years hence dominated by three main forms of beings: the Fleshers, ‘traditional’ humans with or without genetic modifications, the Gleisner Robots, robotic shells inhabited by human minds, and the Polis Citizens, the uploaded minds of humans ‘living’ in computer and simulated worlds. In addition, on rare occasions, the polis creates a new mind, a purely artificially conceived one, albeit very human in many ways.

Over a period of several thousand years, Egan traces the quest of some of these Polis Citizens as they attempt to prevent and then escape the destruction of our universe (an early consequence of this destruction is the end of the Fleshers, and thus, the end of humanity as we know it today). This quest will lead these highly advanced non-physical entities, our descendants, to some of the most far-reaching destinations the mind could possibly conceive.

Egan doesn’t shy away from grand mathematical and physical speculation, and for the average reader, his lengthy descriptions of the universe’s most innate workings will seem a bit tedious at times. But sticking through these sections is quite worth it as one is rewarded by an avalanche of fantastic and awe-inspiring concepts. There is plenty to ponder in Diaspora and anyone interested in what existence might be like as an uploaded mind, in a possible direction for the future of the human race, in parallel universes and multi-dimensions, in the potential for alien life, or simply in the infinite mystery and beauty of the cosmos, then this book is an absolute must-read.

I am still somewhat perplexed by Ken MacLeod’s decision to conspicuously display ‘A Space Opera’ on the cover of his book, directly below the title. Is he trying to inform us from the very start that because it is a space opera, we shouldn’t take some of its content too seriously? Is this a way to excuse or justify a certain lightness and comic approach to this story about the future of the human race 400 years from now, after a singularity-type explosion of technological advancement has led to war on earth and to the splitting of the remaining humans in various gangs that compete with one another in space? If yes, is this disclaimer powerful enough to lessen one’s disappointment when reading that the future will be led by a gang of swearing Capitalist Scots or by some East-Asian Communist community of terraformers? Is this fun for 300 pages? I certainly didn’t think so and was bored after 50. The ideas brought forth in Newton’s Wake do not feel challenging and thought provoking enough or have been better depicted in other novels. They seem to rely on a very 20th century understanding of human nature, communication and social interactions. In addition, the lead characters are all quite uninspiring and, in fact, not really likeable, as exemplified by one of the stories which revolves around two musicians who are, in my opinion, two of the most boring characters I have read in a book recently.
In conclusion, my first exposure to the work of a man who is supposedly a new force in Sci-Fi and transhumanist literature has not been a very enjoyable one and it might be a while before I attempt to read another one of his books.

A friend of mine recently commented that, as a child, he couldn’t get into Iron Man because as far as super heroes went, IM was pretty lame. I also never quite got into the exoskeleton-wearing playboy myself, and I must agree that without fancy super powers, radioactive bugs, hammers from the Gods, extravagant nemesis, or mystical origins, Iron Man in fact offered very little to tickle the imagination of young men looking for something beyond what can sometimes be perceived as the boring limitations of reality.

Iron Man in 2008 tries to connect us to the realities of terrorism and war, attempting perhaps to distance itself from the traditional comic book approach and target market. The Man of Steel (of nano fiber would be more appropriate) can help us win the war on terrorism and the world would be a better place if all the greedy businessmen like Tony Stark, Iron Man’s alter ego, would realize that there is more to gain by helping their fellow human beings than by profiting from them. Thus, a weak and overly simple morality angle underpins a film that also happens to have very little action in it. Following unsuccessfully in the footsteps of the Spiderman franchise, Iron Man tries to be too smart for its own good and is filled with cheap lessons about life. Oh and it banks all of its coolness factor on everyone’s latest and most favourite celebrity: Robert Downey Jr.

Don’t get me wrong; I like the guy as much as anyone else. He oozes so much coolness, he ought to patent it. And ever since I watched Less than Zero (1987) eons ago, I learned to appreciate his mannerisms and the overall modus operandi that is so specific to his acting. But I have also come to understand that this is exactly where the problem is with his performances. One is always watching Robert Downey Jr., and rarely the characters that he portrays. Whatever film of his one watches, one can always expect to see Robert Downey Jr. turning up. But because he is so likeable, and now bankable, roles are made to fit around this set of mannerisms. Whether in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), Fur (2006), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Zodiac (2007), and now Iron Man, the Robert Downey Jr. persona is stronger than the character he is supposed to impersonate, even if this character is perfectly suited to his mannerisms.

There are so many comic book film adaptations these days that each film must find an edge, a unique selling proposition, to make it appealing and marketable. Personally, I think the angles that they found as an excuse to resuscitate Iron Man - current world events, Robert Downey Jr., and possibly the relevance of some of the technology (building such an exoskeleton with the capacity for enhanced strength, vision, communication, endurance, etc…has today nothing to do anymore with Sci-Fi. This is one of the many things that DARPA has been working on for years) on display in the film - are not enough to make this a compelling picture. The characters are by and large poorly developed (which can sometimes be tolerated in comic book adaptations, as long as something else compensate for it), the storyline is fairly weak and predictable, and the action sorely lacking. If one is not going to include much action in such a film, they should ensure that at least other aspects of the film are strong enough to support the overall experience. The end result is that Iron Man is unfortunately a bit bland.

Occasionally, driven by some masochistic need, I subject myself to some trash flick knowing only too well that I am going to regret it two hours later. These films are usually bad Sci-Fi films and the reason I keep doing this to myself is to check how they deal with various futurist topics.
In the case of Jumper, which, as I feared it would be, is a mediocre film, the concept of teleportation serves as a backdrop for a boring romantic and action-driven story line with a strong teen accent. The acting is on the most part dreadful, especially Hayden Christensen in the lead role, and one can only wonder why Samuel L. Jackson seems so interested in playing in so many appalling films. Perhaps he just wants to have fun.

It is however interesting to speculate about the possibility of teleportation. Teleportation has always fascinated Sci-Fi aficionados due to the potential that it offers. Who would not want to be at home in Paris and in San Francisco two minutes later for dinner? Just imaging the possibilities, on earth and across space and galaxies, when these are one day populated by our descendents.
In Jumper, some genetic anomaly allows certain people to teleport themselves anywhere simply by visualizing a preferred destination. This teleportation method, sometimes called p-teleportation or psychoportation in Sci-Fi literature, differs from the usual TV or cinema depiction which traditionally relies on the help of some technological device as seen, for example, in both The Fly (1986) and Star Trek (1979). While teleportation through simply wishing it seems a distant possibility, the more conventional vision is actually not too far-fetched. It is today possible to quantum teleport the information contained within photons and atoms. Scientists are not yet able to teleport matter or energy, but there is no reason to think that this will not happen at some point in the near future (especially if we count on the Singularity). Naturally, enormous problems remain to be solved, such as how to capture accurately all the information contained in the human body so that this information can be copied and reconstructed at destination, or how to ensure that even a perfect copy based on atoms, DNA and molecules, is not missing one key ingredient: consciousness. Depending on one’s religious beliefs, the destruction of one’s original body could be seen as unethical, in the same way that cloning is considered by many to be morally wrong. In addition, for these same people, the idea of transferring the soul into a copy, if this were to be feasible, would constitute a serious act of immoral transgression. All of this will obviously not stop the scientific community from further exploring the concept of teleportation until it is one day possible to record, deconstruct, send and reassemble a human being, soul included, in a fraction of a second and to any destination desired.

In quantum healing circles, it is argued that consciousness, and perhaps the soul, is contained, not in some part of the brain or in some abstract location, but rather in every atom and DNA strand of our bodies. Each cell in our organism contains our mind and has the power to affect every other cell, making our brain the messenger rather than the control room for many aspects of our lives. Furthermore, according to Laszlo’s Integral Theory and Connectivity Hypothesis (which i reviewed here), our cells, and thus our mind, are also connected to the cosmos and all that it contains, making the transfer of information between remote places and entities an opportunity that might exist within all of us but that we unfortunately forgot long ago. If this is indeed true, and I believe it is, the teleportation concept described earlier might even be easier to implement since consciousness might not need to be regarded as separate (and if it is, perhaps Mind Uploading can take care of that part). This could also increase the likelihood that psychoportation, as portrayed in Jumper, whereby one person wishes his or her DNA to be somewhere else, will one day be achievable. After all, Charles Fort coined the term teleportation in 1931 in an attempt to describe paranormal phenomenon which traditional science could not explain. Integral theorists also believe that the paranormal and mystical has a place alongside traditional science in trying to understand our world. Paranormal events might only be a part of a reality which we became blind to.

On a closing note, it is worth mentioning that another method of teleportation could too become reality, albeit probably much later. Using wormholes, another favorite of Sci-Fi literature, to go through space-time is an established possibility within scientific circles and could one day allow us to use gates to move easily and instantaneously throughout our universe or across parallel universes. In a recent article for New Scientist, Michio Kaku actually considers both the teleportation of a person and the use of wormholes to be what he refers to as Class II impossibilities. This means that scientists firmly believe that, although out of the reach of today’s knowledge and technology, these feats are certain to become reality within a few centuries.

From a futurist perspective, the possibility that everything in the universe is connected by a quantum vacuum (or Akashic field, or any other name that might help define what remains an elusive theory), from the smallest particles to the largest cosmic phenomenon, is a fascinating idea to contemplate.
Many transhumanists, such as Raymond Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, believe in the concept of a future global consciousness, enabled through the merging of the human brain with technology, particularly artificial intelligence. Already today, many are pointing at the rise of social applications, the increasing use of mobile technology and at the speed at which the Internet is evolving, to draw comparisons with various aspects of the human brain. Could the Internet become conscious? It is indeed a possibility that is not to be discounted.
Likewise, it is very likely that, sooner than most people realize, human beings, through mind upload and the development of AI, will be able to achieve a pooled consciousness, which one can only hope will lead to a betterment of many ills that plague our world today.
Yet, this connectivity exists already today, as it has for as long as the universe has existed. Moreover, if we believe the System Theorist and Integral Theorist Ervin Laszlo, our universe, having benefited from the infinite learning of this connectivity and coherence, is itself only an enhancement of previous universes, thereby explaining the ultimate perfection that enables every aspect of our cosmic life to come together and function.
Laszlo further speculates that every atom in our body is connected to every atom in the universe, including naturally to those of our fellow biological entities. To support these claims of connectivity between human beings and the cosmos, Laszlo provides a plethora of examples and scientific tests that have been performed over the past 100 years. Regrettably, the troubling and fascinating results from these tests have been mostly ignored by the scientific community (and by the medical community as well, as explained by, for example, Deepak Chopra in his books on Quantum Healing) and by the public as a whole, who prefers instead to discount them and to classify them as alternative and mystical belief.

This loss of ‘focus’ keeps us as a species from reaching towards global consciousness and higher states of being, a realm which is today the exclusivity of a very few, usually those practicing meditation or those gifted with certain abilities such as healing, clairvoyance or even deep compassion and empathy. While technology can be the promise for a better future, there is no need to wait for the Singularity and beyond for the merging of our minds with that of machines to reach global consciousness. We can renew a process that was lost a long time ago by reaching out to the cosmos and by embracing the possibilities of the quantum vacuum that exists all around us and within us. Because we are the cosmos.

This channel 4 documentary, narrated by Christopher Sykes provides an overview of Aubrey de Grey’s efforts to defeat aging. An interesting look at the man who believes that we can perhaps abolish death within the next three decades and whose SENS research into aging is the source of much controversy, it nonetheless offers little new information for those of us who follow de Grey’s work on a regular basis.

I personally even found the selection of shots and angles to be at times purposely unflattering towards the various people that make up the anti-aging group by depicting them as a bit wacky and outside of the ‘norm’. In most cases, the pro-de Grey individuals are interviewed in their home or in a ‘non-institutionalized’ setting, which provides more opportunity for personal judgement and subjective conclusions, whereas the anti-longevity group is mainly seen in laboratories or expensive offices filled with books, as if to tell us that these people know what they are talking about and thus, that they should be trusted.

Does one need to be weird to want to live forever? That seems to be what this documentary would want you to believe. It also reinforces the cliché that if you are not within the norm (whatever this means) then you are strange and eccentric.
As I already explained when I reviewed Radical Evolution, it is interesting that the people who tend to be opposed to a drastically increased or to an unlimited lifespan tend to view those who seek to abolish death as mad geniuses who will do the world more harm than good. They also believe that today’s definition of normal is the one that must be upheld forever, the one that must endure. This obviously implies a complete disregard for what used to be considered normal (a very slippery concept when appraised in the context of history and within cultural considerations), and naturally, for what could become normal. It also implies, in my view, a total selfishness and narrow-minded belief that what we have today is as good as it is ever going to get and that our 20th and 21st century values (or rather, their values) are better and more appropriate than past or future values.

The ‘humanistic’ and preferred angle chosen by many who are opposed to eternal life is that death is what gives meaning to it all (see my review of The Fountain). Without death, one wouldn’t fully be alive. Quoting Freeman Dyson, ‘our humanity depends on the old ones getting out of the way’. Perhaps it is so; perhaps our definition of humanity today depends on newer generations replacing the old ones. But at the centre of these discussions is the word humanity. The anti-aging camp, and futurists in general, accept the idea that our humanity, which is what defines us in terms of values, belief systems, qualities and characteristics, can continue to evolve, even if it means abandoning today’s definition. The critics, on the other hand, seem incapable of accepting a future that will have redefined what it means to be human, especially not if we are the ones who have taken over the process of evolution.
Leave it to nature they say. Do not interfere with the natural order of things. But many of the humans race’s great accomplishments have occurred due to its interference with the natural order of things. If this were not the case, we would be living in a very different world today. I believe it is in the nature of Man to seek control over its own destiny. We live at a time when technology has given us the tools to do so with unparalleled assertion, confidence and power. We are now in control and to negate this potential would be foolish. Rather than negation, what we need is proper monitoring and ethical management of these issues and for the sceptics to apply their knowledge and concerns towards ensuring, not that this research does not happen since it will regardless, but rather, that it does happen in the safest and most beneficial way for all.

Documentaries can be very manipulative and can often play to the already established opinions and beliefs of its viewers. While watching ‘Do you want to live Forever?’, I couldn’t help using my own biases to filter the information I was absorbing. And in doing so, I found Sherwin Nuland and Preston Estep’s (despite Etep’s role in anti-aging research) opinions and arguments against de Grey to be filled with the exact same fear, envy and selfishness that they accuse him of. I tremble when I hear Nuland stating that the world could be destroyed by people such as de Grey and I fear that it is instead the Nulands of this world, the people who keep telling others what is best for them and who keep referring to the norm as the ideal mode of living, as if stuck in some 1950’s suburban ideology, whom we must fear the most.

De Grey is an enigmatic character who has made it his purpose to defeat aging. Whatever his reasons are (and this is another aspect of the documentary that I had problems with; this need to connect de Grey’s quest with a lack of love as a child or with some kind of egomaniac drive), his passion is undeniable and his approach, as unorthodox and threatening as it may be to some of the established scientific community, can only bring freshness, challenge, increased awareness and interest, and, let us hope, faster results.

Related websites:

www.Mprize.org
www.ImmInst.org
www.sens.org
www.longevitymeme.org
www.fightaging.org

What do Michael Clayton (07) and The Man from Earth, two very different films which I watched this week, have in common?
They are both respectable and honourable efforts with dreadful endings. They both deal with beautiful shades of grey that sadly bend and dissolve under the pressure of the all-too easy and ever so reassuring black and white. They speak of ambiguity, uncertainty and ambivalence, but can only snap back, or break, like a rubber band that has been stretched too far, to the comfort and familiarity of the expected.
The Man from Earth is one of those talking films that relies on one location only, in this case a living room, the type of film that seems to be taken straight out of the world of Theatre. Such films need to be adroitly directed and require a very tight script to keep an audience that’s been trained to expect something else from the film medium, from feeling boredom. I remember being bored to tears once watching the arrogant and tedious, one-room only, Friendship’s Death (87). But The Man from Earth, about a man explaining to his friends that he must move away and leave them because he is 14,000 years old and does not want to see them age (and does not want to attract unwelcome curiosity), is much closer to 12 Angry Men (57), or even the more recent Primer (04), and moves at a good enough pace to keep us interested in the possibilities that the discussion raises. Like the characters in the film, the friends who do not know if they should send this man they have known for 10 years to the asylum (perhaps to hang out with that guy from K-Pax) or if they should believe him, but who at the same time can’t stop themselves from asking him more questions, we find ourselves wanting to hear more of their questions and more of his answers. As mad and implausible as his revelations may sound, the screenplay, completed by Sci-Fi short story writer Jerome Bixby shortly before his death in 1998, is so smartly written and laced with so much sharp and plausible dialogue that one begins to think: why not?
Sadly, as mentioned earlier, this nicely challenging and entertaining low budget film falls apart at the end, closing with two scenes that are simply too sweet, convenient and that seem to exist for no other purpose than to raise the audience’s feel good factor…

If I found The Manchurian Candidate (62) unwilling to go far enough in the treatment of its brilliant and daring concept, I certainly did not hold such opinion after watching Seconds. Despite a couple of moments when John Frankenheimer loses control of its material and over-indulges in wobbly camera movements (the wine orgy scene and, to a lesser extent, the party at home scene), Seconds is an amazingly dark and bold film for 1960s Hollywood (after all, Bonnie and Clyde (67), which represents a milestone in American cinema, was also considered dark and bold, but feels, at least to me, much tamer than Seconds), about a man who is given a chance at a new identity and a new life but slowly realizes that the change only makes him more miserable.

From the disturbing opening titles by Saul Bass to the unrepentant nerve-racking ending, Seconds takes you to some very unpleasant places, while managing to make several interesting points about midlife crises, beauty, identity, happiness and success. Some of these points resonate even more strongly today when beauty and material ‘satisfaction’ seem to be more readily accessible than ever, and increasingly at the cost of a traditional (and possibly archaic) definition of happiness. This quest for beauty is made possible by scientific advancement and Seconds reminds us of Les Yeux Sans Visage (60) and of the more recent Extreme Measures (98) in its portrayal of the brilliant scientist or doctor who too easily crosses ethical boundaries in a blind belief in the righteousness of their action.

Rock Hudson is particularly enjoyable to watch and effectively manages to make us forget a hollow reputation acquired by playing mainly in melodramatic roles. The cinematography, aside from suffering on two occasions from the already mentioned overbearing desire to create confusion, does manage nonetheless to craft a very claustrophobic and disturbing environment.

Seconds is not a perfect film, but it certainly is one that has been undeservedly forgotten and should have a place along such classics as The Manchurian Candidate, The Wicker Man (73) or even Don’t Look Now (73).

In Code 46, Michael Winterbottom sends mixed messages about the city of the very near future. On the one hand, the effective cinematography captures beautiful images of Shanghai, London and Dubai to create a post-modernist and exotic view of the city that blends concerns for overpopulation and the impact of technology on individual freedom with a sense of acceptance and beauty towards the alienation created by the modern city. And on the other hand, the lead protagonists are shown to escape to a more ‘rural’ and primitive lifestyle, filling the narrative with a sense of nostalgia for a past when less was available but men were more free.

In the process, the film distorts space completely by mixing shots of various cities to give the impression of another (Hong Kong is Seattle) and by inserting spaces of desert where there should be none, portraying Shanghai as an overcrowded, fenced-in island surrounding by a sea of waste lands. The end result, which feels at times like a music video, portrays the city in a fragmented and ephemeral way, but with enough respect that the problems discussed in the film and the blame associated seem to somehow be shifted away from the city. The city is no longer responsible, simply the place where man’s experiments and the inevitable journey of progress occur.

Excerpt from Architectural Representations of the City in Science Fiction Cinema.

If, like me, you enjoyed Rapture, A raucous tour of cloning, Transhumanism and the new era of immortality, you will undoubtedly be captivated by Radical Evolution. Whereas Brian Alexander focused mainly on the history of genetics and Transhumanism, Joel Garreau propels us full speed ahead towards the future, not only by discussing some of the various ‘enhancements’ that await human beings in the short to medium term, but also by exploring what the term ‘human nature’ really means through the examination of three possible scenarios for the future of the human race….

The Heaven scenario is exemplified by such illustrious people as Raymond Kurzweil, Eric Drexler, Nick Bostrom, Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec, Vernor Vinge, and Gregory Stock (who actually stands slightly outside of this group based on his stronger beliefs in the benefits and practicality of germline genetic engineering over what he describes as cyber exuberance) and is based on the belief that the Singularity is near, the point at which technological advancement will become so rapid that the possibilities will become endless…

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Often considered one of the best Sci-Fi novels ever written, and winner of the first Hugo award in 1953, The Demolished Man tells the story of Ben Reich, a rich and corrupt businessman in 24th century America, who murdered one of his rivals (the first murder in 70 years) and is being investigated by a very intelligent and telepathic detective. Yawn.

I clearly was not engrossed by this detective story which, aside for the concept of a telepathic society, offers few surprises and interesting ideas. Perhaps it did in the 50’s when it came out but I find it today to be quite dated and to propose a vision of the 24th century that I think is way off the mark and slightly irritating in its simplicity and lack of imagination.

Recently, at work, I mentioned that I felt that we humans are living at the most exciting time of our history in terms of changes, opportunities and dangers. The reply was that surely there have been many other periods before when humanity faced major opportunities and challenges and managed to continue moving up the ladder of moral and technological progress.

I have since read Brian Alexander’s Rapture, and I am now convinced that, indeed, Humanity has never been confronted with such possibilities, and in the process, with such risks and perils. We, the people of this Earth, are about to redefine the meaning of human nature (if such a meaning ever truly existed in the first place). We are about to take control of our own evolution.

Visions of Utopia have been around at least since the days of Plato’s Republic, gaining momentum in 1516 and 1627 with the publications of Thomas More’s Utopia and Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis, and finding a new energy throughout the end of the 19th century and the early stages of the 20th, at a time when the promises of the industrial revolution filled people’s heads with dreams and a hunger for the possibilities of the future.

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The critics (at least the ones I usually read) seem unanimous in their loathing of Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, the Fountain.

I usually disagree with one, two or three of them, but when every single one of them writes that the film is a fountain of narcissistic and conceited rubbish, it makes you think that there must be at least some truth to it.

But here lies the beauty of cinema, and of art in general. It does not matter whether one has diplomas, or has worked on sets or has directed, written, shot or edited films themselves, when you speak to someone who loves or hates a film, no amount of discussion and debate will make that person change their mind. There is a visceral element to cinema, one that allows most people to say ‘I liked it’ without really being able or needing to explain why.

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How to begin an explanation of Illium and of Olympos, two novels published in 2003 and 2005 by Dan Simmons, the remarkable author of the Hyperion series?
Where to begin is even more problematic. Four days after finishing Olympos, i am still trying to make full sense of what i just read, and to determine if it is even worth attempting a summary. Or perhaps the only kind of summary worth attempting is a simple list of concepts and ideas that permeate the two books:

Quantum energy and teleportation. Multiple universes. Time travel. Post humans. Old style humans. Nanotechnology. Brane holes. Avatars. Logosphere. Noosphere. Marcel Proust. Shakespeare. The Tempest. Caliban. Setebos. Greek Gods. Achilles. Moravecs from Jupiter. Olympus Mons. Mars. Ariel. Odysseus. Burning Man. Technological singularity. Nuclear apocalypse. Prospero. Sycorax. ARNists. Rubicon virus. Global Caliphate. Wandering Jew. Nabokov. Pantheistic solipsism….

But whereas Illium successfully and wonderfully sets up this amazing and insane concoction of ideas, themes and concepts and made the reader hungry for more, Olympos fails to deliver and to fulfill our expectations. Too many unanswered questions, and too much delivered too early or over too many pages. Still, if you are interested in stretching your imagination and indulging in a little mind bending space opera, this is it.

You love him or you hate him. The likelihood that someone could have feelings towards Michel Houellebecq that lie somewhere between these two extremes seems very low. And this inner range would probably be characterized more by uncertainty and puzzlement than by direct variations in the levels of love or hate.

His detractors and critics condemn his constant and relentless misanthropy, his self-indulgent style, his inability to create likeable, new and interesting characters that would demark themselves from the suffocating imprint of their creator, his bigotry, his penchant for pornographic descriptions…the list goes on. His admirers claim that French literature hasn’t had a voice this fresh, this honest and this ingenious since Sartre or Camus.

Houellebecq hits you hard, and in many different places. He shocks us, amuses us, disgusts us, astounds us, sometimes all in one sentence. He drills and wounds and suddenly applies a balm to the wound, only to re-open it shortly after. His knowledge and understanding of modern society and pop culture can only leave most writers his age, and younger, contemplative. His appreciation and masterly control of technological issues is bound to impress most readers, as is his sharp and witty prose.

But his conclusions and observations of the world are visceral, the reflections of a troubled man who cannot cope with the passing of time and the deterioration of modern society. Houellebecq goes after who we are and his style forces us to confront our own understanding of the world. If that understanding is a different one than that of Houellebecq, we are bound to find his perverse and pitiful. He shocks and puts the reader into an extreme situation and forces a reaction and a realization that her views are either similar or not at all. But the beauty of Houellebecq’s work lies in its ability to touch us all, to awaken emotions, positive and negative, and to take a critical look at what it means to be human.

The Possibility of an Island lacks the snap and energy of the Particules Elementaires, and seems less fresh and relevant. Instead, Houellebecq takes us further into his own soul, further into the depths of his distaste towards humanity and modern culture. Nothing escapes his judgment and critic. There is simply no room for happiness in a Darwinian world where sexuality and the need to pass on genes dominate. Humanity is cruel, as is nature. Humans are no different than animals, and probably worse. Yet, Houellebecq is not all hatred and disgust. The Possibility of an Island reveals an occasional glimpse of sadness, an underlying nostalgia for what could have been, had we not been the humans we are. It is this softness burried deep inside Houellebecq, his longing and his quest for an invisible love, this balm he applies to our wounds, which often entices the reader to go further with him on his journey of doom.

As in Buddhism, Houellebecq’s vision of the world begins with the belief that life is suffering. If in the Particules Elementaires we were given a glimpse of hope through the creation of a new race of human beings, this hope is shattered in The Possibility of an Island. The superior race, even though at an intermediate stage of development, has lost all semblances of emotions. They evolve in a state akin to a void, empty of desire, attachment, sorrow and happiness. Is this the price humanity must pay? Is this the way out of the human condition? Most readers would find this an absurd solution and Houellebecq knows it, demonstrating that, sadly, for the author, the possibility of an island is more remote than ever.

Film architecture and design has existed almost as long as cinema itself. In 1976, Leon Barsacq argued in Caligari’s Cabinet And Other Grand Illusions that the fantasist sets developed by Georges Melies at the beginning of the 20th century were a considerable improvement over anything that had been done previously in that they created a deeper reality and gave the image a more substantial meaning. He further added that cinema escaped its primitive phase once it moved away from simple backdrops to three-dimensional sets, thereby creating an architectural space within cinema[1]. Post World War I, the German Expressionists fully explored this new architectural space through the creation of sets that attempted to reflect the inner emotions of the characters in the films. And David O. Selznik’s use of the term ‘production design’ in reference to the work of the American director and set designer William Cameron Menzies on Gone with the Wind (1939), finally helped film design and architecture gain the official recognition and visibility that has since become an integral part of the cinematic experience and of the output of most film industries.

Following fairly closely the emergence of production values in the history of cinema has been the rise and acceptance of science fiction cinema. It is indisputable that the two are interconnected and that a process exists where both feed off from one another. Cinema learns from architecture and architecture learns from cinema. As far back as 1926, many architects were said to have been impressed and influenced by Metropolis (1926). Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 (1968) also apparently became a source of inspiration for the world of architecture, with the director himself having sourced a lot of his inspiration from several existing architectural and design trends and concepts. Today, terms like ‘science fiction architecture’, ‘high-tech architecture’ or ‘cyber architecture’ are commonly used to refer to a new and ‘modern’ style of architecture that draws heavily on science fiction and new technologies. For many architects, ‘science fiction is an imaginative form of design’[2], making its visualizations worth studying.

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British Science Fiction cinema has always lived in the shadow of its American counterpart, either as a result of a direct effort to emulate an American style to enable the films to reach broader markets or as an indirect consequence of the fact that, since the 50’s, Science Fiction cinema has been associated with America, drawing on its rich heritage of comics and magazines.

But British Science Fiction cinema has in fact a much greater legacy than is often given credit to. Since the beginning of the 20th century, various British directors and producers have explored the genre, often taking it into new directions, pushing its boundaries, and drawing on the wealth of ideas and masterful works which British Science Fiction writers like H.G Wells, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Arthur C. Clarke, John Wyndham and Michael Moorcock have produced over the years.

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I love everything that is Japanese. Well, almost everything. Ever since I was a kid, I have been fascinated by the country and by the myriad of products and beautiful concepts that have come from it. This led me to write my first master thesis on the link between business practices and Japanese culture and history. Japan is a land of extremes, a land of peace and beauty, of pornography and sadism. This paradox is at the core of the Japanese artistic creation. Everything is about balance, about reaching harmony through contrast and opposing forces. Purity and decadence, beauty and ugliness, Zen monks and businessmen, traditionalism and modernism, form and function. But whether it is in modern architecture, interior design, gardening, food, fashion, or animations, Japan continues to be the place to turn to to get a glimpse of the future. And as William Gibson wrote in the September 2001 issue of Wired, “In a world of technologically driven exponential change, the Japanese have an acquired edge: they know how to live with it.”

After the release of Dr. Strangelove in 1964, Kubrick set his sights on Science Fiction.

At that time, America and Russia were fully engaged in a space race that had already witnessed the first men (and woman) in space, and the first unmanned probes to the moon.

The first space walks were only one year away. But more importantly, in the context of 2001, theories abounded about extra terrestrial life and the possibility of ‘alien’ intelligence in the cosmos.

Kubrick was fascinated by this concept and decided it was time to make a serious film about the relationship between Man and the Universe.

He did not take any of the previous science fiction films seriously and was eager to create a vision that would be perfectly plausible and convincing. He enlisted the help of one of the most praised science fiction writer and scientific mind of that time, Arthur C. Clarke. They embarked on 18 months of preparation, with Clarke first writing a novel based on one of his short stories from 1948 (The Sentinel).

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