101–110 of 120 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always loved that about them. Not all sci-fi needs to crawl into its own navel and reveal the condition of Man. Sometimes it can just create and explore a fantastic universe.
I thought it worked better in shorter formats though. (And I was a huge Niven fan.)
My fear with any Snowcrash adaptation is that it will feel like John Carter of Mars (or Warhammer Online [1]). John Carter was a groundbreaking novel, but its ideas became so adapted and universally understood that revisiting them in a movie felt ironically like derivative work. If I have to endure years of my non-cyberpunk friends talking about how Snowcrash feels like a rip-off of Ready Player One, then I will flip…
The Raft is still new 'territory' for most sci-fi, the closest we ever got was Waterworld with Kevin Costner.
Reason remains sufficiently insane as a weapon to this day (like Project Pluto). Raven is, however, a bit 'old' now and I think may need an upgrade.
Smartwheels are still out of reach and car surfing still is cool as hell.
RatThings are just on this side of lovable in a Cthulhu-esque sort of way, so I think it'll be good merchandizing (which, reading that back, really drives home the dystopic feel of 2020)
The metaverse is, yes, very old now. I'll be interested to see how they deal with it.
Uncle Enzo and L. Bob Rife scream out for parallels to Bezos and Gates. So, not really 'new' but still fertile ground.
All that said, the first chapter is literary genius and it would be extremely difficult mess up. All the build up to find that Hiro is a ... pizzaguy. So good.
While Snow Crash is one of the all time great sci fi novels, it famously has a huge plot hole: although Stephenson saw a lot of things about the future with remarkable accuracy, he did not foresee the ubiquity of the cell phone. A simple cell phone would have undercut the main plot. Now that we know what we know, how will they account for it?
L. Bob Rife is a telecom mogul; presumably there will be some handwave about how he's manipulating the phone network to keep anyone from interfering with his plans.
While Snow Crash is one of the all time great sci fi novels, it famously has a huge plot hole: although Stephenson saw a lot of things about the future with remarkable accuracy, he did not foresee the ubiquity of the cell phone. A simple cell phone would have undercut the main plot. Now that we know what we know, how will they account for it?
It's been awhile, but I thought VR glasses in "Snow Crash" have all the functionality of cell phones, you just need to log into a 3D metaverse to communicate with someone else.
I'm glad to see this happen. Suspect that a network exec somewhere said: "Sci-fi! Dystopia! Rogue AI! Cyberpunk!" and then HBO went through the list of books meeting that criteria (copying the Game of Thrones formula) and picked a best-seller to make a screen play out of. The subject matter seems to fit quite well with the tech malaise we are feeling at the end of the 2010's.
Disney has Mandalorian . Amazon has The Expanse and recently picked up Ringworld for a tv-series too. Another unnamed network is supposedly currently considering Red Rising series as well. Sci-Fi dystopia is hot right now.
In that world what the Golds do to humans on Earth is considered ancient history.
The main character’s rise as a Red is certainly a struggle. And the plight of all Reds and the other colors is equally similar.
But overall the story arc is more similar to the Biblical story of Noah, but with gladiators and space ships.
To be fair, the story of Noah might be considered dystopian to prosperous Jewish cultures a few thousand years ago. But at some point everyone’s plights become history.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disney has Mandalorian . Amazon has The Expanse and recently picked up Ringworld for a tv-series too. Another unnamed network is supposedly currently considering Red Rising series as well. Sci-Fi dystopia is hot right now.
I don’t really consider Red Rising dystopian at all. In that world what the Golds do to humans on Earth is considered ancient history. The main character’s rise as a Red is certainly a struggle. And the plight of all Reds and the other colors is equally similar. But overall the story arc is more similar to the Biblical story of Noah, but with gladiators and space ships. To be fair, the story of Noah might be consider…
The author is a history buff, and describes his motivation for the society as looked back on mankind's history and seeing that it's not a gradual progression towards becoming better, but a cyclical process oscillating between egalitarianism and authoritarianism (fascism).
Either way, it will be a damn good story to see play out as a series. Despite the first three books being from only Darrow's perspective, the characters rival Game of Thrones IMO.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Epileptic seizures can be triggered, that's the only actual adversarial attack on the human neural network that I'm aware of that actually works, and is more common than you might think: https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/photosensitive-epilepsy
I assume you have never explored your own literal blind spot [0] and how the brain just plasters over it with some hacky texture filling... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"3%" fits that definition too.
3% is a solid dystopian show - it's clearly got a lower budget for CG but it tends to use practical effects when possible and the CG doesn't terribly detract. It's also nice to see a Brazilian show get an international audience.
The actual series expanded on this, but felt hollow by comparison.