A Brief History Of The Future

‘Longpath’ futurist Ari Wallach’s TV show A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FUTURE has great commentary, by the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson and George Monbiot, but also unexpectedly interviews Emmanuel Macron and Ellen MacArthur. Questions without easy answers mean this century’s problems demand imaginative solutions. 

Influential speculative-fiction is clearly not working fast enough by educational standards. Could 3D-printed homes, cyber-thumbs, or coral-farming save the world? Wallach explores naive dead-ends and inspired thinking, asking how can we safely ensure that dazzling sophistication and baffling complexity of humanity develops with sustainable results? 

Dunes

Top surrealistic space-fantasy Dune (1984) is the magnificently cinematic cosmic fairy-tale that genre-thieving Lucas’ clearly wanted STAR WARS to be. Although other directors tried to film Frank Herbert’s novel before (see Ridley Scott’s attempt), and since, David Lynch’s great masterpiece; sadly, “they tried and failed” and their stains became a warning. DUNE’s operatic strange sci-fi eclipses nearly all previous space-opera movies, including Fred Wilcox’s classic FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956), as when the seemingly limitless hyper-science of alien tech on the Krells’ planet Altair 4 is compared with later desert-world Arrakis’ hidden powers. Yet both psychological and philosophical mysteries about invisible forces (see also Jedi check-lists) are revealed by romantic innocence; when Duke’s heir Paul (Kyle MacLachlan, perfectly cast) contrasts with that of (mad?) scientist Morbius’ daughter Altaira. Fathers die, sometimes violently, but offspring usually survive... and might evolve.

“The sleeper must awaken!”

After reading Max Evry’s book A MASTERPIECE IN DISARRAY - a very good compilation of interviews with behind-the-scenes commentary and a great treasury of anecdotes, new interpretations, and reminiscence - I found it an excellent, if repetitive tribute; although its binding proved rubbishy when the hardcover fell apart halfway through my first reading. 

Then I re-watched the studio’s extended TV edition of DUNE (1988), with its clunky comic-book styled intro, and sometimes annoying narration. But even this flawed DVD release, that Lynch himself disowned (“I did not say this. I am not here.”) looks and feels wonderfully superior to John Harrison’s TV remake mini-series (2000). Presented in 4:3 ratio, the 158m. DUNE edition includes a spitting scene inspired by Frank Herbert's eco-aware novel, that fully demonstrates the mythic and vital currency of water. While extra scenes of character development, or depth, are welcome, some of the effects are repeated, a few miniatures are misused in this longer storyline resulting from clumsily revised edits, and additional footage of the Fremen lacks their blue eyes. It remains the best indication that a proper Director’s Cut from Lynch would certainly improve DUNE, much like Zack Snyder’s 4-hour JUSTICE LEAGUE was better than Whedon’s truncated ‘Josstice League’ of 2017.

What never fails to impress me about DUNE, in any of the studio’s cuts, is the picture’s fabulously bizarre atmosphere, strengthened by excellent use of sound effects, and peculiar details like the stunningly animated personal force-fields that are uniquely designed visuals. Of the Harkonnen villains, the diseased, insanely ranting, and almost-campily perverse, floating fatso Baron (Ken McMillan’s edgy psycho performance remains quite definitive) strives to embody the ‘most horrible man in the known universe’, and suceeds where all manner of Darths failed. Although the film's special effects might be polished a bit too shiny if redone by today's standards, following 40 years of technical advancements, the sheer wealth of artistic oddities in Lynch’s extravagantly imaginative DUNE ensures its lasting appeal. As a visionary fusion of quirky SF and grandiose fantasy with such a timeless quality, it seems to me that no mega-budget remake can hope to match it.

I enjoyed both of Denis Villeneuve’s remake movies, but even if combined they never equal the genius level of creativity that benefits Lynch’s original. Yes, the two-part adaptation is undeniably spectacular and vividly stylised SF; including more words, dialogue lines, and Fremen culture references, lifted directly from books of this genre franchise; plus the most cleverly designed ornithopters (like dragonflies), so far. 

And yet, this director also commits obvious mistakes (like bagpipes, for starters). Worst of all though is that he glaringly omits all but a token presence for the Guild Navigators, whose ghastly mutant appearance, and their space-folding powers, so energised the mixed-genre content of Lynch’s movie. This lapse by Villeneuve is unforgiveable because the complete lack of any Guild creatures excludes a major part of DUNE’s pulp-SF themes, simply to focus upon the less fantastic characters’ emotional baggage, and sundry cultural aspects in the world-building scenario. 

So, a messianic Muad’Dib (Tim Chalamet) wins screen-time for a bigger speech, that’s passionately delivered, but also a theatrical exemplar of grandstanding, to unite tribal Fremen freedom-fighters under his banner for a war-of-the-worlds plot that’s rather too boringly dystopian. I would always prefer to see a spectacular new vision about folding space. Giving actors more stuff to do was, ultimately, the downfall of superhero movies in the last 20 years. Villeneuve’s version of DUNE weakens the future possibilities for most blockbuster sci-fi beyond STAR WARS and STAR TREK franchises. Double-DUNE could and should have been a lot better than it is. As it stands, in the latest batch of classic-SF adaptations, even Goyer and Friedman's TV series FOUNDATION - amusingly resembling an Asimovian DR WHO - proved superior as epic space adventure and planetary romance.   

HyperThick

HyperThick

Steve Aylett

Floating World paperback $15.95

***** (5 stars) review by Christopher Geary 

“If you drink a glass of water while falling off a cliff it has the same effect as poison.” Another bundle of joys, brain-child of Steve Aylett, master-mind of indie comics, HYPERTHICK delivers madly inventive surrealism & frequently caustic satirical broadsides at peak levels of creativity for a stylised medium. Eccentricity of retro-flavoured comics art does style-critics no ersatz favours at all, while “horror expands to accommodate one’s endurance” with earnest defiance of 4-colours conventionality & rationalities taken away to extremes. “Sure, coincidence conducts electricity. But it’s not meant to.”  

Far from rectangular standards of sequential & fictional outlooks now, daze-trader Aylett plops dry wits into witnessing human worlds at bogus works & kilns of role-play. Creative cooking with gassy discharges, here’s gunpowder writing that modestly blasts even serviceable hyperbole with subconscious glee. Fresh icons: fractal-haunted rebel Su Pesto, haywire detective Biloxi Blake, pirate Fox Grave, wry blurter Benny the Hen compete for any attention-span using their tauntingly inspirational jazz, with keynote speech-balloons. “A ghost is the afterimage of someone not seen during their lifetime.” Aylett’s patented sarcastic mayhem looks increasingly likely, but you cannot guess the rest. Meanwhile this book's resident philosophical advertiser Harry McInch might denounce capitalism jokes while only his elusive figment 'Donna' knows why. 

“..hope we’re an elemental puzzle, but it’s all orphan symmetry I’m afraid.” All this, plus ‘Sedition Kitsch’, too. There’s clearly something apocalyptic for this multi-verse of twisty endings that emerge from dreamscape musings & medley (“zigzagging to please is exhausting”) of rambling themes, before...

Not sponsored by HORK

Affidavit: my name’s not Tony 

21st Century SF Movies

Year’s Best SF Movies 2000-19

This is my listing of the 20 best SF movies of this century, one from each year, so far... selected with due consideration for a subgenre variety, while avoiding too many franchised sequels and remakes. No apology for celebrating Golden Age of Superhero Cinema. See the complete listing at -
http://pigasuspress.blogspot.com/2020/01/2020-visions.html

In The Time Of The Breaking

In The Time Of The Breaking
Andrew Darlington 

Alien Buddha paperback £12.49 

**** (4 stars) review by Steven Hampton 

Vaguely referencing Asimov’s classic Nightfall, as a planetary catastrophe becomes a personal apocalypse, In The Time Of The Breaking is about the seemingly colonial Qulan people that live inside huge mobile habitats, like Star Wars walkers, linked as a restless wagon-train. Young hero Culak Va-Saar is the viewpoint-character for first-person storytelling that injects the reader into a rush of narrative, while richly poetic descriptive flair gives many paragraphs and passages a vivid sense of place, with sensory intensity and immediacy, although some of the story’s events might be taking place only in the protagonist’s head-space. 

Profoundly affected in their wanderings by the hazardous orbital approach of a super-Moon, the Qulan prep for stormy weather prompted by lunar gravity, while Culak fears for his own sanity due to EM disturbances that confuse and muddle individual thoughts with the memories of ancestors, apparently leaks from Culak’s inheritance of cyber-implants - embedded archival personalities and knowledge store-keepers. These implants provide hoarded familial wisdom and social continuity beyond death, if not exactly an artificial afterlife that is, perhaps, in conflict with reason or any psychological unity. 

After pirates attack the Va-Saar vehicle, doomsday anxiety infects rationality and the survival plans of a wholly superstitious culture of guilds. Culak must confront his weird connections to all the voices in his mind, including his own shouldered angel and private demons, as the Qulan struggle to recover their questing spirit, harking back to the Wellsian era’s Things To Come, to endure and overcome crisis-management problems that recall When Worlds Collide. 

Into this arena of ‘New Directions In Scientifiction’ (as the novel’s subtitle so audaciously proclaims), author Andrew Darlington scatters the grand mythic aspects of lost civilisations and a Phantom City, and offbeat vibes concerned with a competitive creativity festival, a futuristic artistic Festos, where Culak performs his phonetobardics composition, wisely inferred by its flavoursome taste only, and not explained in great detail. An adventure crashing out from the inner mind’s ‘paradoxical imagination’ to the outer limits of astrophysics, on an endangered world where the Moon looms terrifyingly larger than any of three Suns in the sky. 

Scratchman

DOCTOR WHO: SCRATCHMAN
Tom Baker 

BBC hardcover £16.99

**** (4 stars) review by Christopher Geary 

An irresistible novelty book, this delivers on the promise of genre-franchise fiction in a manner rarely seen but always welcome. An actor famous for a beloved incarnation of a favourite character turns his hand, somewhat belatedly in his professional career, to an original novel based on his own performance of British SF-fantasy & horror superhero, the Doctor. The book attempts, quite boldly, to distil everything admirable, fascinating, and quirkily eccentric about Tom Baker’s tenure on the TV show into a chaptered story that flits effortlessly thorough Whovian lore, and Gallifreyan mythology, complete with much space-time gallivanting, with engagingly distressed, and endangered, companions. It never challenges readers' loyalty to the on-going show, and mostly fulfils expectations. OK, so there are no Daleks, but a Cyberman guest-stars, and both Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan are very well represented in a devil-bracing narrative dotted with mortal perils. All things considered, Doctor Who: Scratchman is great fun, and nearly a new kind of retro-Who masterpiece. 

It starts with a small island, besieged by animated scarecrows. Not just any old farming-related traditional menace, but zombified creatures, seemingly the ‘possessed’ bodies of local folks, victims of an inter-dimensional invasion. It’s a fairly typical Doctor Who foe, at first, but shocks accumulate, horrors increase, and stakes are raised as eldritch forces behind the evil goings-on makes a claim upon planet Earth, and the mystery of ‘Scratch’ unfolds. In-between all of the present-tense developments, on the morbidly conquered island and later, in a surrealistic version of ‘Hell’ that Terry Gilliam might have once imagined, the Doctor confronts antagonism outside of his familiar adventures in an episodic court-room drama that requires him to educate the immortal Time Lords about fear itself and its philosophical consequences for a multiplicity of intelligent life in a wholly indifferent universe.   

Yes, Scratchman is often a genuinely subtle story concerning the mortal dreads found at the heart of horror as a distinctive genre. Its varied menaces, drawn by Scratch from ‘the dreams of ghosts’ depend upon widescreen cinematic mayhem but, in this ever-relatable incarnation of the Doctor (all of our hero’s dialogue is carefully worded so as to facilitate the tones of Baker’s distinctive voice in the reader’s imagination), even troubles of death-games on a fantastical, enchanted battlefield that rudely mixes pinball and chess, can be overcome by a charming ideological perseverance, sincere brand loyalty, and honestly heroic self-sacrifice to honour human friendships.

The inclusion of jelly-babies and neutron-flows are wittily integrated into this SF/ fantasy adventure and will surprise no fans of Doctor Who in the 1970s, but the Doctor’s knowing humour extends far beyond a merely jokey approach, and exploitation of such familiar check-list items. Appearances by previous Doctors are handled with levity but also respect for the other actors potent contributions to the franchise. Scratchman delivers an expansive narrative in less than 300 pages, and it’s a publication that offers the hugely satisfying appeal of a ‘last chance to see’ event.

Cunk On Everything

Cunk On Everything: 
The Encyclopaedia Philomena
Philomena Cunk

Two Roads hardcover £12.99 

**** (4 stars) review by Steven Hampton  

At last, here is a populist educator, or at least a cult-worthy explainer of the esoteric and the mundane, to rival Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Noah Chomsky and Richard Dawkins, but she’s also a person who closely resembles TV star Philomena Cunk. In fact, this is a (reportedly non-fiction) book composed by Cunk actual (alias, Diane Morgan), the great BBC presenter herself. 

This practically definitive, if not quite definitively practical, volume is a guide to learning. An encyclopaedia that’s just like the so-handy kind of condensed package of sundry items and supremely fascinating information that we used to have at home when I was a kid. It is an all-purpose repository of superior knowledge, not unlike that single-volume reference Enquire Within. That was a weighty book, but this is a rather lighter text. You see, it’s so fashionably lite, it might leave you feeling light-headed with glee... the glee of eccentric absurdism that is. 

From ‘Adam & Eve’ to ‘zombies’, Cunk On Everything covers the sum total of vital human knowledge to date. It has all you could want to know, but are too witless to ask. Perhaps innocence, not ignorance, is the New Bliss. If you have heard of Occam’s razor, here is a scalpel of stupidity, dissecting human reality. It charges forward with a head full of steam and there’s just no point in arguing or feeling any sense of exasperation at the book’s various spelling errors, because they’re all clearly intentional.   

Sincerely, going on about historical Britain, Cunk tells it like it never was: The ‘BayWatch Tapestry’ is “one of the few photographs made of string”, and (of course!) “if the Anglo-Saxons had been on Twitter today, it would be exactly like it already is.” On the subject of ‘animals’, Cunk declares that only ducks, insects, snails, and tigers are important, while the Art world is defined by the likes of Michael Angelo and Tony Hart. Meanwhile: “Ballet is like dancing, but you don’t do it yourself, someone else does it.”

Monty Python, in all of the comedy troupe’s media guises from TV or movies, to stage, recordings, and picture books, have long since defined the best of British humour, with a subtle combination of intellectualism and the infantile, or the profound in contrast with the puerile. Cunk’s article on ‘books’ notes how the reading social media on our smart phones is better, probably, and The Phone Book offers the best of both worlds. Confused? You will be, when the copious non sequiturs kick in, and they boggle your mind as practical inventions are written off as discoveries. ‘Police’ were discovered, but ‘Legs’ were invented. ‘Evolutionary psychology’ is capable of explaining “why people have children” - and it’s “to become so tired that death isn’t such a big surprise”.

Why do Buddhists make such a fuss about ‘knowing yourself’ when you can find out by simply filling in a questionnaire? History is defined by references to ‘black and white photo times’ when many media-related things were “the Internet of their day”, as if an exciting modernity was crushed by a wave of humdrum stuff. There’s also frequent recourse to stream-of-unconsciousness narratives disguised as irreverent humour, with nothing worthy to say about important subjects and far too much comment about trivia. Thankfully, Cunk wisely devotes more pages to ‘the human mind’ than to ‘hiccups’.

During the 1980s, ice cream was by revolutionised Viennetta, which is “what ice cream would look like on its wedding day”, or perhaps it’s what the Taj Mahal is made of? It’s unfortunate that Jesus can’t even be mentioned here without off-beat and scattershot allusions to Danny Dyer, but they probably deserve each other, just as nightmares follows newspapers. Shakespeare gets a whopping whole nine pages, explaining how he invented theatre and perfected English, just in time to save many poor people from boredom in those olden days of yore and forsooth.

While writing about television, Cunk opines that phones “used to be a thing for communicating with people.” Now, as new phones get bigger (to match the size of TV sets?), they are “for looking at and ignoring people.” Radical criticism and wild interpretations of unaccountably popular TV continues with an assertive assertion that Top Gear was actually Last Of The Summer Wine rebooted. When considering ‘truth’, Cunk confesses that “I might have been made up by someone for a laugh.” Like many meta-fictional conclusions “it’s a comforting thought.”