As usual with our short story posts, we urge you to read the story before listening.
A parable on the sacrifices even the most utopian societies have to make. Does Ursula LeGuin’s acclaimed story dig into a deeper truth…or is it simply stating the obvious? Worse, is it suggesting that the best we can do when faced with atrocity is walk away? Rob and Clive try to unpick this most knotty of threads, only to find themselves more deeply tangled than before…
A.I was planned and prepped by Stanley Kubrick, then taken over by Steven Spielberg after the auteur’s untimely death. The resulting film is a strange mix of the two director’s signature styles, and even now it polarises opinion. Rob and Clive take a detailed look at the film, its themes and the inhumanly excellent performance of Haley Joel Osment.
Let’s go in search of the Blue Fairy…
(we apologise for the state of Rob’s voice. The space lurgy has him in its snottily-tentacled grasp…)
OH NO! Rob and Clive have piloted the Ulysses right bang slap into the middle of an ion storm! With energetic particles scrambling CycloMedia’s logic circuits, the deranged AI is stuck in a recursive loop, demanding more and more input.
Can our hapless heroes snap CycloMedia out of it before the radiation fries them all?
Rob and Clive review:
After Earth
Avatar
AVP: Alien Vs. Predator
AVP: Requiem
Attack Of The Puppet People
Rob really does not like Armageddon. Can Clive persuade him to the merits of the Bay-buster, or is this one going down like an asteroid the size of Texas? Join our intrepid pair of trivianauts and deranged AI CycloMedia as they spend some time in Bruckheimer-Space.
Here’s a taste of the Bay-tastic style of the movie…
Outer space is all well and good, but all the cool kids know that inner space is where it’s at. Rob and Clive take a look at the Ken Russell adaptation of Paddy Cheyefsky’s Altered States, and come to the conclusion that the greatest discovery of all is the ability to love…
Here’s a taste of the wild visual invention at play in Altered States. In this scene, Professor Eddie Jessop takes native hallucinatory agents in a field trip to South America. The resulting trip is… unsettling.
Mon Dieu! Rob and Clive peek into the world of French SFF, with a nose around Les Adventures Extraordinaires de Adele Blanc-Sec. A crazy steam-punk mash-up, part Indiana Jones, part Amelie, part Tintin, with a wink to Melies. Mummies! Pterodactyls! Bringing people back from the dead! It’s all in here!
We apologise in advance for the ‘Allo ‘Allo-style dodgy French accents.
CycloMedia points Rob and Clive at a story about a supercomputer with a mysterious agenda. How very appropriate.
A For Andromeda is a classic piece of British TVSF that would be well worth your attention. If only there was a way to see it…
A wide-ranging SF subject, of course, but here CycloMedia has pointed us at the obscure New World movie from 1982, starring Klaus Kinski as a space Frankenstein.
It’s life, Max, but not as we know it…
and if you want to know more, what better than a peek at the film itself? Don’t say we never give you anything!
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 