DARK CITY essentially has gorgeous photography, capturing aspects of the entire city where imagination paints the picture and provides the details. This film relies a lot on imagery and the fantastic production values are laced with a perplexing storyline that keeps the viewer's eyes glued to the screen. The eye-catching, stylish future noir designs a visionary world, evinced in the setting of the Big Apple itself, New York City during the time period of the 1940s. Dark City's visual backgrounds enliven a difficult and incomprehensible plot to comprehend and the special effects create an astounding experience, traveling into a vortex of mankind's phantasm.
DARK CITY, in addition to the superb background settings, allows for character development as well. The audiences grows greatly in a moment of eagerness as they want to determine what will happen next to the characters in this film. As always, the cast is wonderful.
Rufus Sewell is excellent as John Murdoch, convincing as an ordinary man on the run trom both the law and the strangers. Jennifer Connelly is sensuous and appealing as Murdoch's loving and concerned wife. William Hurt plays his cards right as a straitlaced NYPD inspector, Frank Bumstead, who keeps pursuing John Murdoch. As an eccentric psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Paul Schreber, Kiefer Sutherland conveys a confused doctor who shares a frightening connection to these Strangers.
DARK CITY is splendid viewing injected with a theme about the loss of identity and the destruction of individualism in order to create an ideal society. DARK CITY is an unforgettable, breathtaking visual experience!
This film is enriched with layers of characterization, a plot where there is more than meets the eye, and venturous special effects. DARK CITY is recommended viewing with the lights out! A thoroughly cogent flick which keeps you guessing what is going on. DARK CITY is a fine treat for the eyes and mind. This is one journey where you reach the point of no return!

To the classical sci-fi/Azimov purist this may be the single most offensive piece of media ever put to a screen. However as someone who is familiar with Azimov's writing and understands that it simply cannot be adapted in any meaningful sense while retaining source accuracy unless you're comfortable with losing every penny you put into production. I thoroughly enjoyed this series and plan to rewatch it regularly.

Despite covering a number of dark and morbid themes, the series retains a relatively bright and colorful palette and overall tone throughout the majority of the episodes. It reminds me of old British. fantasy/Sci-fi TV that I grew up watching like Dr Who or Merlin. Helps that the show has a lot of British talent on screen lmao.

Hi guys,

I posted this in r/whatisit 4 months ago and never got a definitive answer. Does this character, or the tech they are wearing, snap on any light bulbs for anyone out there? I turn to you because the chest plate and gauntlets/bracelets they're wearing look like space tech, but then add the Hawaiian shirt and glasses?

Found this enamel pin for sale at a flea market, I just want to know who it is supposed to be but the more it haunts me the more I want to go back and get it (if it's still there).

Any ideas welcome, thanks!

EDIT guys, u/Which_Channel5273 figured it out: it is the fourth and final form of shapeshifting The Bibleman villain Ludicrous - absolutely random thing to make a pin out of. Thanks homie!

It had been many years since I'd watched the original Blade Runner, and rewatching it reminded me of just how frickin' good this film is. The visuals, the score, the vibes, the ambiguous ending (Final Cut version)... it's really no surprise that this film has been exalted to the canon of quintessential sci-fi. So much good to say about it, but that scene set to Vangelis's "Love Theme" where Deckard and Rachel kiss for the first time is so powerful.

If you've never seen it, I highly recommend a watch. Don't care where you watch it, but it is on Amazon Prime right now. Whatever you do, I would definitely recommend watching either the "Director's Cut" or the "Final Cut" versions over the theatrical release. The aforementioned cuts are more "art of film" and less "Hollywood".

Today I finished “Flatland / Sphereland.” It was intriguing. In Flatland by Edwin Abbot (1884), a square tries to explain his 2D world to 3D readers. When he encounters a sphere visiting from a 3D world, he learns of the reality of the third dimension (and even visits the 3D world). He tries to explain it to others in his 2D world but is ostracized. In Sphereland (1965), Dionys Burger continues the story. The square’s grandson, a hexagon, continues his grandfather’s legacy and explores concepts of curved space and an expanding universe.

You do not need to be skilled in math or physics to appreciate this book (I never went beyond algebra and geometry). It explains the concept of multiple dimensions in ways that were easier to visualize than explanations that I have previously seen, and it inserts moments of humor and social commentary.

I was also intrigued by the construction of the book. Usually when a volume contains two books, the second book is placed immediately after the first book. You read the first book, and then proceed to the second. In this book, after you read Flatland, you need to flip the book over to read Sphereland. This actually makes sense, because they are two universes that exist parallel to each other, and so the two books are parallel to each other in this volume.

Wow what a really slept on film!

Surprisingly it's a Disney film but made by the people who brought you Terminator 3: Rise of the machines.

Who here has seen it?

It quietly did alot of box office business when it was released.

It gives me Andrew Niccol vibes like maybe it would have done even better if he directed it?

Rating: 4.25/5

Finished Children of Time last night, and it was a really good read, although not quite what I was expecting.

What I loved most was the storytelling. Watching the spiders evolve physically, intellectually, and socially over generations was fascinating. Seeing how their society developed little by little, with each generation building upon the achievements of the previous one, was probably the most unique aspect of the book for me. I haven't come across anything quite like it in sci-fi before.

However, the constant time jumps also made it difficult for me to get attached to the spider characters. Just when I started getting invested in one generation, the story would move forward and introduce a new set of characters. I understand that these time jumps are necessary to tell a story spanning thousands of years, but I still felt somewhat disconnected from the spiders on a personal level.

Before reading the book, I came across several reviews saying that the spider storyline was the most interesting part, while the human storyline was rather boring. Surprisingly, I found myself feeling almost the opposite. I really enjoyed the human storyline and their journey across thousands of years. Their struggles, decisions, and attempts to survive kept me invested in their side of the story. In fact, I sometimes found myself more interested in what was happening with the humans than with the spiders.

Another thing I wish the book had done differently was explore its ideas in greater detail. Despite being around 600 pages long, the book somehow felt too short to me. The evolution of the spiders and the development of their technology were often explained in brief paragraphs, leaving me wanting to know much more.

For example, the idea of using ant colonies to operate machinery was fascinating, but the explanation felt too brief. I wanted to understand how these systems actually worked and how the spiders developed such technologies. Having recently read The Three Body Problem trilogy, I was expecting a similar level of detail in the scientific explanations. I loved how Liu Cixin explored the mechanics behind his ideas, such as using human soldiers to simulate a computer and calculate the movements of the three suns. I wanted Adrian Tchaikovsky to spend more time exploring the science and engineering behind the spider's inventions.

Overall, Children of Time was a fantastic and genuinely unique sci-fi experience. I loved the central concept, the storytelling, and the way the book explored evolution and the development of an entirely different civilization. My main complaints are that I wanted more depth in the scientific explanations and that the time jumps made it difficult to form a strong attachment to the spider characters.

(Contact, 1997)
Infinite rewatchability for me. Every plot point in the movie is executed to perfection. The themes, the dialogue, the performances. I can never get the "The fact of the matter is we don't even know if they believe in God" line delivery out of my head.

Even if the sci-fi beats in this movie don't land with you, I would recommend watching this just for the dialogue.

Some of my thoughts about Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, contains spoilers so be warned!

Rachel aging backward because of the Time Tombs has got to be one of the most devastating ways sci-fi has ever played with time. It's a sort of play on the universal human experience of knowing that the past is gone for good. Except here for Sol it's happening in reverse, and having to watch the past become the future for his daughter and have it happen day after day is one of the most horrifying things that could happen to a father. The "See ya later alligator," part was so heartbreaking.

The tragic part for us readers is that this suffering is very real. This kind of grief happens to everyone. I'm seeing it with my own grandma and her dementia. I'm dealing with losing someone slowly, even though her body is healthy, her mind is slipping away day by day.

I highly recommend the Hyperion series for anyone who likes sci-fi and hasn’t read it. I personally think the first two books are good enough on their own but if you like the last two that’s great too.

(Revised post to hide spoilers)

Equilibrium is a very fine movie. Highly entertaining, the score was more than okay, the casting does a really good job. Bale is all complex, nuanced and charismatic, and the fight scenes are beautiful to look at.

Bale went from stone-cold to an emotional man is simply flawless. He gets to transmit everything the story needs at the right time.

Cons are the character “Father”, who seemed too weak to me, and the ending which doesn't do justice to what comes before. In any case, this is an awesome sci-fi flick and it is highly rewatch-able even today.

Any fans?

I watched this movie recently and was amazed that a 2019 film, made before modern AI was even widespread, managed to accurately portray what people predict for the future of this tech. I checked around to see if anyone else was talking about this, but everything I found was from back when it was released. Watching it with today's perspective changes everything, it’s super interesting and pretty terrifying. This is very accurate and is exactly the vision that I believe is quite likely to occur. We actually dont stand a chance 🤔

And it just sold out in 3 of the 4 stores!

Ghosts of Kurosawa is a fast-paced sci-fi thriller about a former assassin forced out of hiding when his presumed-dead partner returns with a genetically engineered virus that could kill millions.

If you like:

-Assassins

-Tokyo underworld

-Generic engineering

-Political Conspiracy

-Action thrillers

-Revenge stories

-Emotionally damaged characters

- And batsh*t crazy villains

This might be for you.

It's available at most online retailers. Hope you like it!

im talking films like edge of tomorrow, the martian, terminator etc. nothing wrong with those films but im after something with more of a moral, human leaning to it like gattaca or westworld. something that isaac asimov or arthur c clarke could have written, but in visual form.

I have been trying to find the name of this old show I watched in the 90's. It might have even been early 00's but I think more 90's. I hoping this group may know.

It was a group of teens or young adults on a ship, I do not remember any middle aged or older characters. Here is where my memory gets murky. I am pretty sure it was "lifeboat" ship after the destruction of the Earth and the crew was looking for a new world. Not sure season numbers.

I want to say the bridge was dark lighting and the crew woke from some kind of stasis.

I am hoping someone here can point me in the right direction.

Edit: I have found it. From 1997 Deepwater Black or Mission Genesis.

i’m about halfway through and i still don’t know how to feel. obviously i knew it wouldn’t be exactly the same as the three-body problem books since it’s not written by liu cixin, but with the same translator the language is actually pretty similar and overall i’d say it’s been enjoyable. on the other end, the finality of the ending of death’s end was also really enjoyable.

what do other three-body problem fans think about this one?

Has anyone else read Liu's short story, Mirror? It's part of his short story collection titled "To Hold Up The Sky"

In Mirror, scientists develop a computer so advanced it can run a simultation of the big bang. The simulation is so accurate and precise that it predicts everything that's ever happened in the universe, including everything that's happened in human history.

Anyone with this computer can see everying that's ever happened. Everything you've ever done in private, every historical event, everything. There are no more secrets, there's no more sneaking.

The implications of this are so fascinating and frightening to me. I can't stop thinking about this story. I love how Cixin Liu takes his ideas to the farthest extremes.

This is one of the worst books I've read. It's worse than Galaxy 666, or Herberts' Hellstroms' Hive. Niven and Benford, two authors I hold in high esteem, who gave us Ringworld and Great Sky River, try to co-author a story that hits like it was supposed to be a children's picture book but they changed the idea halfway through and suddenly needed 300 more pages. The aliens are childish and unoriginal. The humans are boring and vapid. The setting is vast, but never gets more development than "continents the size of worlds". So much plot is spent explaining that the humans only burn dry wood to minimize smoke. The captain of the starship Sunseeker has no idea of how his ship functions, except when unhinged technospeak is suddenly introduced and forgotten. One of the main characters sleeps with another woman about a week after he sees his wife abducted by aliens. The story never seems to go somewhere; it's like the setting is too large that the writers themselves couldn't fathom it, and gave up trying. It's also interesting that you can tell who wrote which part by wordage; Benford is trying to relive his Galactic Center days with "indices" and vague references to cybernetic modifications, but the main characters seemingly have none of these mods themselves.

The aliens;

They're literally called Big, Medium, and Small Birds by the humans. The humans just run around murdering them, and maybe trying to find other aliens to help them? I'm not too sure what the goal is, and the humans don't seem to know, either. But the birds, or Folk, have a super complex society that is barely registered, because it's too complicated. Most bird scenes are hyper political.

Other issues;

Words are repeated way too many times in a paragraph. "Gear" is thrown around, but the descriptions of the equipment are left blank. The writing is middle school level at best. Don't read this book.

Any other folks make it through?

Hi, Ive just finished the third book (In viriconium) and I know harrison deliberately leaves things in obscurity (pretty much like Wolfe does- but he doesnt play fair like Wolfe did.. You read hard enough and you understand Wolfe. Cant say the same thing about Harrison although I enjoy him very much). Note: Im not a native english speaker..

1) What happened in the end in the tower of The Grand Cairo with him and fat mam Etteilla and the shining cards with the efulgent light emmiting from what was left of them (5 cards)?

2)Gog and Matey's nature.. why are they refered to as gods by Ashlyme in the end? he stabs one of them and in they end theyre seen in the sky with great white horses in scarlet armor. One of them transformed earlier taking noble features and hair at shoulder length (this evokes Tegeus-Cromis?)

3) what was that tapestry/curtain Ashlyme found in the end in the "Seller" shop?I think Seller is another word to evoke Cellur, the Bird master? In the epilogue it describes it as a man yellow of age between two big buildings and a dwarf on a donkey (evokes Tomb and his pony...)

Aything else I should know about the ending of this third book or anything else you think of importance to note?

Thank you :)

Moin

I usually paint my SciFi paintings with oil paints. However, when I am on the road for work, I do pastel studies with pastels on a special paper. Somehow I have to satisfy the urge for it.

For travel, the medium is perfect for me because it's handy yet super miscible and opaque.

A small selection of my pastel studies.

All brass (and a bit of copper), wooden grip, no glued on gears, a real high voltage arc in the barrel and a glass bulb with cooling liquid. All handmade parts, total work hours around 120 h. Weight is around 10 pounds. The flip-cap switch is breaking the antique look a bit but, I thought it looks cool.

I never thought my self-published science fiction tale of a far off planet where a humble farmer pops out clones of himself from his bum would catch the imagination of the reading public.

I was right.

BUT, thanks to the nice people on this sub who responded to a self-promo post of mine, September was my best ever month for book sales, with well over a hundred on the scoreboard. For context, four or five sales a month is more normal for me.

So I just wanted to say a big thanks for supporting indie creators, it sincerely means a lot to me and I appreciate it, especially as I have zero marketing budget.

Pretty much what it says on the tin.

True aliens, non-humanoids. Clearly intelligent and clearly trying to communicate, but they're so different that it's not even clear what they *consider* communication, and unlike with other humans or other mammals, you have no baseline understanding of how their species works or what their body language might indicate or even what *category* of concept they might be trying to communicate at any given moment, because you have no idea what things you have in common, if any.

Is movement communication? Do the color patterns have a meaning? Is a huge chunk of their communication happening with a sense you don't have a receiver for? Are they inferring communication from things you don't even know that you're doing?

And once you start to notice a pattern, how do you communicate complex things using an extremely rudimentary understanding of extremely basic concepts with absolutely no possibility of nuance?

I love what was done in the Arrival movie and the Hail Mary book, but I want even more time spent in the absolute confusion part.

Hope y'all can help, 'cuz otherwise I might have to write something like this myself. 😅

(P.S. As mentioned in the title, this craving was brought on by watching videos of humans trying to establish a shared method of communication with their pets via buttons that correspond to human words and concepts, and the pets not only using this method effectively but also seemingly trying to express more complex thoughts/emotions with the limited vocabulary they have available -- e.g. they were dreaming and had a nightmare, they are grieving the death of someone, they want to know when someone will be home from a trip, they are worried about the weather, et cetera.

If those interpretations are correct (or even close to correct), then it's really quite remarkable, but I just keep thinking of how strange it might feel to the animal to adjust to this kind of communication (which is nothing like their own, as far as we know) and how frustrating it must feel when they're trying to tell their human something and the human doesn't understand at all and is thinking in a completely different direction.

If you haven't seen these kinds of videos and are interested in them, there's Todd the tuxedo cat, Bunny the dog, BilliSpeaks (who has now passed away), and I just discovered @MrHenryKnows, a bengal cat who seems to understand words first and only then gets buttons for them)

EDIT:

If anyone else also wants to explore more of this genre, here are some of the works that have been coming up in the comments:

• Arrival (2016 movie)
• The Hail Mary Project by Andy Weir (book, not movie)
• Embassytown by China Miéville
• Foreigner series by C. J. Cherryh (20+ books, especially the early ones)
• Chanur series by C. J. Cherryh (5 books, from the aliens' pov?)
• Children of Time (#1) and Children of Ruin (#2) by Adrian Tchaikovsky (also possibly Shroud by the same author
• Star Trek: The Next Generation episode 5x02, "Darmok"
• Serpent's Reach by C. J. Cherryh
• Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang (the short story that Arrival was based on)
• Blindsight by Peter Watts
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977 movie)

As a fan of some of the harder, grittier, more philosophically and scientifically rigorous titles in this genre. Its nice to come across a movie like this whose only purpose seems to be to make you smile.

NB: If you are like me and you enjoy this movie, ignore the reviews! They don't know this movie like we do!