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 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.

A sometimes poorly structured and organized documentary with a moderator whose voice would put you to sleep if the topic wasn’t so interesting, The Future of Food nonetheless provides an interesting look into the dangers of genetically modified foods and is a good companion piece to the better We Feed the World (2005).

As people across the globe slowly become accustomed to hearing about genetically modified corn, canola or soybeans and fail to fully understand how it impacts them, corporations such as Monsanto are busy patenting seeds (and thus life; a horrifying thought to ponder. Big pharma is now beginning to patent genes), developing and planting new genetically modified crops, unbeknownst to most, and suing farmers in an effort to pressure them to use these corporations’ seeds. These corporations are also consolidating the food supply, thereby reducing the diversity of our crops and produces and driving many farming communities out of business, both in the Western and Third Worlds. In a word, everything awful that you have ever heard about what motivates corporations is unfortunately also applicable to the world of agriculture and genetically modified foods.

But this is not new. Monsanto’s main pesticide and herbicide, which has been used widely for decades in numerous countries, is based on military technology from World War Two, particularly on nerve gas and on the famous Agent Orange. Has Monsanto ever bothered to try to really understand what this means in the long term for the people eating crops or eating the animals that eat the crops sprayed with this stuff? Probably not. As one Monsanto executive stated about genetically modified foods, their only responsibility is to sell their product and to make money, not to ensure their safety, which they regard as the responsibility of the government. Unfortunately for all of us, most of the individuals with the real power in the two branches of the government that are supposedly looking after our safety (Federal Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture) are ex-Monsanto employees or are directly affiliated with the corporate world, in a manner reminiscent of the Bush’s administration’s various ties to many corporations that benefited from the war in Iraq. We live at a time when compassion and empathy are badly needed, but these are clearly not a corporation’s forte.

Therefore, it is up to us to ensure the safety of our food by living an organic lifestyle, by informing ourselves and by putting pressure on these corporations to increase the safety of their products and to provide us with more transparency on their actions and on which foods contain GMOs. The most naïve thing people can do is to assume that their voice or actions do not count. In the same way that something as simple and easy as replacing the light bulbs in your house can make a difference and reduce your energy consumption, buying organic produces, supporting your local farmers and encouraging sustainable farming can have an impact on the system, as well as on your health.

As I have stated before, we live at what I consider to be the most important and interesting time in our history. Our mastery of science is increasingly enabling us to consider new horizons and to change our destiny in ways that would have seemed impossible not so long ago. I believe in technology and I believe that it can have a positive impact on society. As a futurist, I also believe in the inevitability of progress and that whatever we fear today, we will accept tomorrow. For this reason, I am not opposed to genetically modified foods in the long run, in the same way that I am not opposed to genetic engineering in general. Yet, I believe that we are at the early stages of these developments and that they are currently not safe. Consequently, it is out duty to ensure their safety by pressuring the system. A year ago, driving back from the G8 demonstrations in Northern Germany, a friend asked me why I resisted GMO’s if I loved technology. I answered that I fight it to ensure its safety as quickly as possible, before it does too much damage, rather than to try to ensure that it never happens. I also do it because corporations are out of control and are ruling too many aspects of our lives. Their power must be reduced and their greed controlled. It is our choice to decide if we want to try to make a difference.

http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto

http://www.thecampaign.org/

http://www.monsantowatch.org/

http://www.ucsusa.org/

So here I am, hanging out in the flavellas of Rio de Janeiro, taking some well deserved time off from my busy schedule and hoping to find inspiration for my next screenplay, when, sadly, I come across a film shoot: Hulk número duas.
I observe silently for a few minutes until Louis Letterier comes over, greets me and proceeds to tell me about how this Hulk movie is going to kick some serious ass but also how it will skilfully marry action, adventure, mystery and emotional depth. A new level in comic book adaptation, a work of such intensity that people will quickly forget the mediocrity of Ang Lee’s first Hulk, he says…a portrayal of emotionally troubled creatures who long for the acceptance of the world and the normalness of others…a story of love, betrayal, courage and sacrifice…a timeless piece that, yada yada yada yada…

At that moment, feeling a sudden craving for a Mojito, I pull one of my best disappearing acts, leaving this man behind who is still talking to no one, and knowing only too well that this Hulk film is going to be a disaster of monstrous proportions.

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.

Taking place in the Paris of the very near future, this French cyber thriller, reminiscent of the slightly better Renaissance (2006), tries very hard to be noir, cool and hip but pretty much fails on all levels.

The de rigueur techno bluish-chrome cinematography is of little help in bringing this story about cloning and memory implants to an above average level.
The lead character can’t act even if his life depended on it, making one wonder why some directors seem to think that mediocre actors are a good choice to play unemotional black turtleneck-wearing tough guys.

There are a couple of somewhat interesting scenes where the technology discussed in the film is displayed, such as remote surgery and memory removal and implantation, but, overall, Chrysalis is a bit of a yawner.

And we would like to thank all the corporate sponsors whose brands are shamelessly and promiscuously displayed throughout the film….

Terrible acting, incredibly badly written script, poorly developed characters, horrendous and annoying soundtrack, total rip off of previous films, complete lack of creativity in terms of visualizing the future 25 years from now, amateurish film making…that about sums us this so-called film about a quarantined Scotland in the year 2030 after a virus has killed most of the population.

Any credibility that Neil Marshall gained with The Descent (boy am I glad that I did not join many others in praising it) should be immediately revoked and his name sent back to the depths of obscurity from which it came.

Doomsday has got to be one of the worst films in recent memory and I am very sorry I watched it.

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

I am grateful to Francis Lawrence, who previously directed the decent comic book adaptation Constantine (2005), for bringing seriousness, darkness and sobriety to the Hollywood Sci-Fi blockbuster. In a world where the Michael Bays are working hard to reduce the global IQ and EQ levels with mind numbing big budget action, it is refreshing to see a director trying to add cleverness to escapist entertainment.

I am Legend is based on the 1954 influential novel by Richard Matheson, and it is now the third time that this apocalyptic tale of the last man on earth, somehow immune to a virus that has either killed everyone else or turned them into vampire/zombie hybrids, has been made into a film. The Last Man on Earth (1964) with Vincent Price, has become a cult classic and set the standard for all future zombie films (George A. Romero has often credited the novel as his inspiration for Night of the Living Dead (1968)) while The Omega Man (1971) with Charlton Heston, who brings to the film his Planet of the Apes (1968) / Soylent Green (1973) ’screw the world’ cynism, does the original novel less justice and suffers from several problems, least of which is the laughability of its creatures.

One of the most annoying trademarks of Hollywood blockbusters, at least to me, is the supposedly funny one-liners that the hero typically spurts out in the most improbable situations. Normally used to alleviate tension and to bring lightness where there should be none, the blockbuster funny one-liner dumbs down and cheapens the cinematic experience. I was able to count only one in I am Legend (‘I like Shrek’) which is a major improvement over the number that can be found, for example, in two of Will Smith’s previous Sci-Fi efforts, Independence Day (1996) and I, Robot (2004) or in Michael Bay’s most recent disaster, Transformers (2007).
One is also the figure I came up with for the number of really poorly scripted scenes (Bob Marley Sr.), which, again, is quite an achievement for a film this expensive and this heavily marketed.

That is not to say that I am Legend has no other flaws but, again, when measured within the greater considerations of the blockbuster, these seem fairly harmless and do not detract too much from the overall viewing experience. The sobriety is at times reminiscent of The Quiet Earth (1985) while a couple of chilling scenes will bring 28 Days Later (2002) to mind and even The Descent (2005) in one case.

In 2001, Judith Berman stated that Science Fiction literature was suffering from a failure of imagination and that the best most writers could offer us these days is Sci-Fi without the Future. This point was made again more recently by Alex Steffen in WorldChanging. After all, even Sci-Fi and Cyberpunk supremos William Gibson and Neil Stephenson have decided to take a break from the future in favour of the present or the past. In the words of Gibson himself, ‘the future is already here. I have become convinced that it is silly to try to imagine futures these days‘. Some writers now find it difficult, and perhaps also less fun and challenging, to write about a future, the near future at least, that has caught up with us. Cyberpunk’s not dead some might retort, but a strong case can be made that we are today experiencing the future more strongly than ever before.

One man for whom the very near future continues to be a source of inspiration is Vernor Vinge. Vinge, an ex-mathematician and computer science professor from San Diego State University, whose novels A Fire Upon the Deep (92) and A Deepness in the Sky (99) I can highly recommend, achieved notoriety in Futurist circles when he proposed his theory of The Singularity at a NASA conference in 1993. Vinge, along with many other fellow futurists such as Raymond Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom, believes that we are fast approaching the point at which technological advancement will become so rapid that the possibilities will become endless.

In Rainbows End, which won the Hugo prize in 2007, he explores, by way of a cyber thriller, the impact of this exponential growth in technology on the merging of the real world with the 4 scenarios described in the 2007 report The Metaverse Roadmap issued by The Acceleration Studies Foundation: Virtual Worlds, Mirror Worlds, Augmented Reality and Lifelogging.

What makes this novel a convincing and compelling read is not necessarily its big ideas or even the underlying plot. Instead, it is the amount of details that Vinge uses to describe everyday life circa 2025. Almost any field of progress that is being discussed today is represented and elaborated on in Rainbows End, providing for an overall depiction of a richly constructed ‘reality’ that feels extremely believable. While great strides have been made in areas such as health, transportation, building and construction, and genetic engineering, it is around the 4 Metaverse scenarios mentioned earlier that Vinge builds its portrayal of a near-term society. As it is envisioned in The Metaverse Roadmap, reality in 2025 is a mishmash of the ‘real’, the virtual and the augmented, with the later two (both enhanced and complemented by lifelogging) increasingly replacing the first one as the preferred choice for socializing, learning, communicating, and for entertainment. Vinge uses an ‘old-fashioned’ character, Robert Gu, a man born in the 1960s and cured of Alzheimer in 2025, to not only advance the plot of the story, but also to contrast two worlds and sets of beliefs and to attempt to answer the question: what would life be like for a person with prejudices about the future and about technology if this person woke up in 2025? How would he or she deal with a society where most people below a certain age now wear special contact lenses connected to an astounding amount of computer power embedded in their clothing, thereby allowing them to access instantly information about anything they could possibly want to access, to communicate immediately with anyone on the planet, to create whatever virtual spaces they desire to enable this communication and to see in various layers of augmented reality the fruits of their creation or the results of their requests for information and interaction? In short, how would such a person feel if reality as they knew it had pretty much ceased to exist?

But Vinge doesn’t stop there. He also goes into a fair amount of details about the technology itself and about issues that are already important today with regards to the internet and the WWW and that will obviously become even more so in the future: open source vs proprietary, free vs fee-based, security, privacy, gender, identity, laws and regulations, universal currency, trust, reputation…

If this sounds like a lot to chew on, credit must go to Vinge for adroitly incorporating these discussions into the plot and into the daily life of the characters without the dialogue ever sounding preachy or pedagogic. It’s good entertainment all the way but skilfully mixed with all that you might need to know about the technological, social, economical and philosophical benefits and challenges facing humanity within the next 20 to 30 years.

As we approach the fourth and final season of the TV series Battlestar Galactica, based on the 1978 cult Sci-Fi series of the same name, and with the recent release of the excellent Razor, it is worth stating how surprisingly addictive this modern version is. I can’t remember ever following a TV series for three years in a row, but that is exactly what I have been doing with Galactica, even though I initially got into it somewhat reluctantly, assuming that modern television, which I have come to associate for the most part with trash TV, could not possibly deliver on the promise of the original series, and to a larger extent, could not, week after week, year after year, provide intelligent Sci-Fi.

But Galactica has done just that. There have been many moments when the different style and vision of a new director became too obvious and created a disjunction in the viewing experience and, in some cases, resulted in quite boring episodes, but overall, the series has been consistently solid, entertaining and clever.

Being the cynic that I am, I spent the first few episodes listing all the inconsistencies I could find (and there were many) and why certain things such as fashion, books, pens, products designs, allergies, cancer, city architecture, and much more, all looked and felt so terribly 20th century. A civilization that has mastered the ability to build ships that travel across space but that still writes with pens, uses notebooks and can’t find a cure for breast cancer…At that point, I felt that the problem with Galactica was that it failed where so many Sci-Fi films or series have failed before…it failed to effectively and convincingly create the world that it is supposed to create. Whether for budget reasons or for wanting to keep the viewers in an area of familiarity, or simply, for lack of trying, Galactica uses a large number of current human metaphors, traditions, and habits to portray a world that exists far into the future (or into the past)….but that world should in fact look nothing like today’s world. A civilisation that is capable of building faster-than-light ships, a civilisation that split a long time ago from the civilisation that lived on earth, so long ago in fact that new myths have had time to develop, would dress, eat, behave, live, and possibly even look very different from the way we do today.

But I suppose only Sci-Fi nerds like myself would let that bother them, and in all fairness, I fully realize that sustaining a TV series for 4 years without making these types of mistakes would require a higher budget and/or an increasing reliance on animation and, ultimately, the series would probably end up with a much smaller audience due to a lack of familiar, earth-like, frames of reference.

Despite these initial concerns, I found myself slowly captivated and sucked into this world that adroitly combines human and personal stories with larger issues that draw on current events (torture, war, terrorism, tolerance, politics, genetics….) that also seem fairly plausible as potential issues for the future; well, for the near future at least, since if one looks seriously deep into the future, one would expect some of these issues to be resolved, or at least, to have taken on a very different meaning.
Most of the characters are well developed and cast, and each episode (with the occasional exception) has at its core a strong storyline that offers its own rewards but rarely seems disjointed from the overall and consistent thread of the series.

In the end, it is refreshing and pleasing to see a Sci-Fi TV series being handled with such genuineness and earnest. Battlestar Galactica has definitively done its bit towards restoring credibility to televised Sci-Fi and to Sci-Fi in general.

Planet Terror has over-indulgent geekiness written all over it. B-movies have always been made with a specific crowd in mind, the type that can easily look beyond the obvious cinematic limitations of the movie and instead can find in it an interesting form of entertainment, and in some cases, the epitome of coolness, whatever that may mean. With the passing of time, these movies also have the potential to attract additional viewers through the ‘nostalgia effect’. When watching such films, one is taken back to the 50s, 60s, or, as it relates to Planet Terror, to the 70s when the Grindhouse double bill developed its legions of followers. Personally, and obviously one can deduce from this that I am not an admirer of these Grindhouse films, I believe that it is the knowledge of going back to a specific point in time, to experience a piece of ‘culture’ from a certain decade and country, that makes some of these films watcheable, and, at times, enjoyable. Most of them were bad films, but they were not always made with the knowledge that they were bad, or if they were, time has taught us to look back on them with anthropological compassion and with some kind of tolerant understanding.
However, when Tarantino and Rodriguez had the bright idea to come up with a deliberately bad double feature called Grindhouse (Planet Terror and Death Proof, marketed separately in Europe), to honor the past, and in Tarantino’s words, to offer viewers something ‘fresh and original’, they either must have assumed that the entire world lives on the same geeky film planet as they do and would rush to the cinemas to see their films, or, as is most likely the case, they just decided that they wanted to please themselves and do something to pay homage to a form of cinema they both love. I can just picture the both of them sitting in some room, writing the script, and telling each other: ‘a machine gun instead of a leg? Right on!’, ‘let’s make the reel look old. Now that’s fresh’, ‘and then the head explodes…how cool is that?’
The problem is that none of this is in fact that fresh or original (unlike both director’s early work). It’s old. And it only works as new for about 15 minutes and then wears off quickly, leaving behind a profusion of mindless and silly gore, and, regrettably, not one iota of scariness…even worse: the film is not funny. What kind of a Zombie film does not make you either laugh or scream?
I said to a friend ‘it’s a bad movie’. To which he responded: ‘That’s the point’. But, no, I believe his answer is the one missing the point. The real point is: it’s a bad movie. The fact that it is an intentional bad movie does not turn it into a good movie. And let us not be deceived by an artsy-fartsy, Rodriguez/Tarantino-can-do-no-wrong-because-they-are-so-cool, you-either-get-it-or-you-don’t temptation to see something that isn’t there. Remove the names of the directors, and the appeal of the film drastically goes down.

Of course, the debate between B-movies lovers and bashers has been raging for decades and it will not be solved today. If Rodriguez and Tarantino were hoping to please the lovers, they probably succeeded. If, on the other hand, they were attempting to attract some of the skeptics, I believe they failed.

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.

This remake of the John Frankenheimer classic is a relatively decent effort by Demme and his screenwriter, who manage to somewhat preserve the sense of paranoia of the original film and the book upon which it is based, while modernizing the story with 21st century issues and themes. The criticism of the Bush administration and of its support of war profiteering corporations, while subdued, is still quite welcome in such a big budget Hollywood film.
While I tend to think that the film would have benefited from withholding the truth from the audience a little while longer, from forcing the viewer to question the authenticity and reality of more scenes, and from being more audacious in its political ‘incorrectedness’, The Manchurian Candidate nonetheless moves along at a solid and entertaining pace.
Just don’t expect the same quality as the original film.

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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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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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.

Christopher Nolan’s latest film, while intriguing, falls short of the brilliance he previously demonstrated with Memento, and to a lesser extent, with Insomnia.

This tale of two rival magicians in 19th century London, released curiously almost at the same time as The Illusionist (one of these Hollywood ‘coincidences’), suffers from an unnecessarily complicated narrative structure that offers too little reward for the effort, and from a large number of overly convenient and unrealistic scenes. Many of these scenes do not always flow smoothly into one another but rather seem to jump, skipping over essential material that probably couldn’t be handled meaningfully, or highlighting a characteristic of faulty scripts: the inability to make all the different parts function together. Or perhaps, it is simply the result of the narrative structure that Nolan chose, proving in this case that, sometimes, plain old linear might be better.

The outcome is uneven, fascinating and beautiful to look at on the one hand, dull and somewhat amateurish on the other (especially the scenes with Scarlett Johansson, in what is regrettably a very boring role).

And the ending of the film, its Prestige, a slightly outlandish (in its realization, and not necessarily in its idea) and constant back and forth of revelations, a bit a la Mission Impossible when everybody takes turns removing their mask, felt somewhat anti-climatic as some these revelations could be guessed earlier in the film and seemed out of sync with the intensity with which Nolan propelled us towards them.

Spoiler ahead:
I must now go and look for my doubles as I think I went through that Tesla machine at Burning Man once…

This Korean flick should serve as a case study on the terrible use of music in film. In fact, might as well turn it into a case study on the terrible use of everything in film. What starts as an intriguing rip off of Blade Runner, AI and Minority Report dissolves into a lamentable and pitiful semblance of a film with enough soapy music to make you reach for your DVD incinerator.

Margaret Atwood calls her ‘futuristic’ work ‘speculative fiction’, drawing a distinction between what she sees as a possible soon-to-be here future and the more distant extrapolations of traditional Science-Fiction. And Oryx and Crake, like The Handmaid’s Tale before, does indeed feel uncomfortably close, and real.

Influenced by the author’s own fears about the state of our planet and of our society, the book presents a dystopic view of what our world could be like 20, 30 or 40 years from now. The upper-class, represented mostly in the book by individuals and families working for large scientific corporations, live in protected and luxurious compounds that shelter them from external contact with the rest of society. This ‘rest’ lives in what is perceived by the elite as a dangerous and chaotic no-man’s land, whose boundaries and exact geography remain fairly vague. Global warming related catastrophes have become so common that the ‘compounders’ have learned to adapt by changing some of their traditions and habits, such as moving the students’ graduation date to February to avoid the scorching heat of June. One of these students is Crake and he has a plan for humanity. He wants to rid human beings of their shortcomings, which he believes are responsible for the problems plaguing the world.
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