The Oncoming Hope

In a development that will be of particular interest to those living in unsanitary conditions, in college (do I repeat myself?), and in tempestuous marriages, two Chinese material engineers have invented self-cleaning cotton clothing.

If you're interested in the science behind the new material (it is shockingly simplistic, even to this noted chemistry-phobe), I recommend this article by ExtremeTech. Nutshell: titanium dioxide + nitrogen = laundry bliss.

Basically, the nanoparticles clean themselves when exposed to visible daylight. They break down stains, bacteria and smells so they can be rinsed off with water. Think of it as armor for cotton, keeping out the nasty stains (I can see the ad campaign already!).

All is not perfect, however; the chemical compounds are highly toxic and turn your skin blue. It's up to you to decide: look like a Na'avi, or keep your pockets heavy with quarters?

It seems fitting that since I've added an unofficial "robot" beat to this blog, there's been tons of exciting robot news and a visit to the wonderful Robotville festival at the Science Museum.

Of course, as with the soft robot, many new robotic developments seem just as likely to bring us to the robopocalypse as to a better society. You can file these new prison guards with the former.

South Korea is beginning a month-long trial of new robot guards, 5 foot tall machines designed to appear friendly to inmates. They're not designed to engage with the prisoners, but will report observations back to a human guard on duty.

The advantages are obvious: they're immune to prisoner taunting, they won't exploit prisoners, and they'll be unbiased observers.

However, I'm guessing they aren't terribly immune from that most basic thing that all prisoners will have access to: water.

The prototypes were designed by The Asian Forum for Corrections, in concert with Kyonggi University. And they assure us that "the robots are not terminators".

Isn't he cute?

Designed by a team of Harvard scientists led by Professor George M. Whitesides, the soft robot mimics invertebrates, and therefore does creepy invertebrate-like things like slinking and slithering and worming.

The chemists used an elastic polymer to house the creature, which moves by inflating and deflating various valves and tubes to squeeze its way through tiny gaps.

If you're not creeped out enough, now watch it in action.

(via engadget)

Another Earth is easily my favorite new movie of this year. This may sound like big talk, but I was once a quiet, ponderous teenager who looked for her future in the stars (and sometimes, in the furthest reaches of dreamland, I still do).

As fair warning, the film starts out quite slow, and takes time to build momentum. But once it does, that momentum keeps growing and growing, hurling us closer to the narrative, just as Earth 2 hurtles closer to Earth 1.

In tone, it reminds me most of Winter's Bone. Our protagonist faces incredible tragedy in her life, but the movie never asks us once to feel sorry for her. We understand that she is deservedly robbed her of her youth for accidentally robbing Professor John of his wife and child.

When Rhoda (Brit Marling) emerges from prison, she seems dead, both inside and out. As consequence of her crime, she has to walk everywhere, giving her ample time to consider the mysterious orb in the sky. The cinematographer throws himself into these sequences; they're more beautiful than BBC nature documentaries.

As far as she's concerned, there's only one route to salvation: a voyage to Earth 2. We know very little about Earth 2 at the start of the movie, and I'm not going to spoil any of the film (that said, you can probably guess the nature of Earth 2).

But it's the structure of the movie that really sold it to me.

Revelations about Earth 2 are dealt piecemeal, through radio snippets and moments spent with television news broadcasts. It's a brilliant way to weave in expository elements, as we get to watch various characters react to the news.

Rhoda keeps approaching John, the man whose life she ruined, each time attempting an apology, but failing miserably. If she's dead inside, he's a black hole, sucking in the energy from everyone and everything around him until all lay silent in his house of death.

But each new piece of information causes subtle shifts in the relationship between Rhoda and John. Just as the position of the moon affects the tides, the position of Earth 2 affects their very beings.

Rhoda has many qualities that could lead us to hate her, but we don't. We want her to find her second chance, to make things right in whatever small ways possible. And she does, in a very unexpected way.

The instant the credits rolled, I demanded a sequel. I can only hope that Marling and co-writer Mike Cahill pen a follow-up that focuses more directly on the interchange between the denizens of Earth-1 and Earth-2.

Science fiction fans may complain about the lack of grounding in the science of Earth 2 (in fairness, Cahill has said that he filmed numerous scenes with physicists like Brian Greene, but cut them out in the end). I wasn't bothered though. There are strong thematic similarities with Revolutionary Road and Rabbit Hole, and as in those films, the hope of salvation functions just as well as a metaphor in the movie as a dream of reality.

OTHER THOUGHTS

Brit Marling is a revelation as Rhoda. As with Jennifer Lawrence last year, I fully expect Marling to rocket to superstardom in one year's time.

William Mapother is fantastic as grief-stricken John, but there was a small part of me that couldn't separate him from creepy Ethan in Lost. This may have helped his character though, as John's a little bit menacing himself. Perhaps people on the edge of despair always are.

Another Earth may seem a little bit under the radar for an "Oscarbait" piece, but it's been sweeping the festival awards. I doubt it will get too many nominations, but it deserves one for cinematography, soundtrack and direction.

Meet Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia, which I imagine will be the setting of many a Roland Emmerich film in the future.

Originally planned to be a mile high, now it's just over one kilometer high. Judging by its pointiest of points, it will serve a secondary purpose of impaling alien spaceships.

Look, its first prey is built into the design!

You can read more about the building here, if you're less interested in alien threats and more interested in mundane details like "architects" or "square meters".

If you've been following the blog-o-sphere, you might be aware of an internet spat over the depictions of women in The Game of Thrones. I've been following it with interest, though I've only seen the HBO series and haven't read the books.

While I don't feel comfortable taking a stand on TGOT, (please do read Sady Doyle's original post and Alyssa Rosenberg's response), I am very interested in the broader issues raised. I recognize that you may not all agree, and I only ask that you please be respectful in the comments.

Alyssa Rosenberg framed the following questions on her Google Plus page, which I aim to answer here:

1. Do you believe that consuming period or periodized literature implies a nostalgia for that time period?

I do believe that writers who choose these settings can be nostalgic for those settings, i.e., "I long for a time when detective stories didn't require many pages of my hero performing a Google search."

But then again, I believe you can treat certain settings almost as mini-genres. A medieval setting carries certain story-telling expectations, as does a space colony setting, as does an Emerald Isle setting. The same is true for stories set in 19th century Bath, England.

As readers, I believe our consumption of periodicized literature is guided by our preferences for particular mini-genres. But I think for a reader to make the choice to read AGOT or Lord of the Rings instead of, say, Ivanhoe, means that the reader has explicitly chosen works that reflect the contemporary period rather than the historical one.

It's also a very lazy, superficial criticism: "You only like Mad Men because you long for the days when men were men and could sleep around and drink all day."

That said, I think readers can be nostalgic for certain aspects of a period, if not the totality. Regency-era fiction is making a mint off of young girls who wish they lived in a time when social relations with men were more regimented, more polite, and less dependent on scary things like sex. But that doesn't mean they want to live in a time when they can't inherit property or vote.

2. Should fantasy stories take place in ideal worlds or worlds that are designed to provide useful thought experiments?

I'm inclined to say neither. While there successful examples of both (Star Trek: Next Generation, Atlas Shrugged) you run a powerful risk of boring the crap out of the reader. You can start your story in an ideal world, but it can't stay that way, for then it would lack tension, aka that thing that makes stories interesting.

But what is an ideal world? There is no ideal world that's ideal for everybody. The far future in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine is wonderful for the Eloi, but they're not even aware of what's happening under their feet. In Brave New World it's all happy sexy times for everyone, except for the people for whom the drugs don't work.

As for "useful thought experiments?" That just sounds horrible and didactic. Fiction can and should engage with serious themes, it should be provocative, but those ideas should never be privileged over narrative. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, "It's the imagination, stupid."

3. What is the point at which depictions of domestic or sexual violence become gratuitous? Why do depictions of sexual or domestic violence have to meet a different standard than aestheticized action violence?

The first is a question that even the Supreme Court cannot answer, and I'm not sure we can either. Basically, you are asking at what point does a work stop generating artistic interest and only generate prurient interest?

In lit, if it doesn't drive a character or the story forward, then it's gratuitous. Period. If it's described in unnecessarily loving detail, it's gratuitous. How do you judge whether it meets those conditions? It differs from person to person.

As for the second question, I was not raised in a household where this was true. My parents would infinitely prefer I watched Law and Order: SVU even over the anodyne action violence in The Matrix.

That said, I think this has something to do with the real world. You will never run into aestheticized action violence in the real world, but you are very likely to encounter, be a victim of, or know someone who is a victim of sexual/domestic violence. Because being raped is a real fear, people are more disturbed by it than if their city was blown up, which is not a real fear for most in the Western world in spite of outlier attacks.

4. Is it necessarily sexist to depict female incompetence?

Definitely not. It certainly can be, especially if all the female characters are incompetent, or there's only one female character and she's incompetent (i.e. Willie Scott in the photo above), but it's ridiculous to say that this is necessarily the case. The problem is when otherwise competent women are portrayed as making silly decisions without any background as to why.

Why, as feminists, are we meant to stand up for all women? Am I expected to defend Margaret Thatcher, Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann? Absolutely not. Then why must we pretend women like this don't exist in fiction? Lot's of women don't like each other for many reasons, most of them quite valid. To pretend this is not true renders any work toothless. Unless of course it's a "useful thought experiment" demonstrating a world where all women are competent.

Let's look at The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood. No one's gonna argue its feminist bona fides, but the most flat-out evil character in the novel is the woman in power, the Commander's wife. Is that somehow sexist? Certainly not. It expresses a truth: there are some women, like there are some men, who would do anything to hold onto their power. Likewise, there are other women who fight against those people in power.

THANK GOD THAT'S OVER

So what do you guys think about these questions? Any examples or counter-examples you'd like to bring to the table?

Weigh in in the comments, folks!

 

Film Noir vs. Sci-Fi, not Sci-Noir

My friend @meckett (a living, breathing example of the lovely statement that "facebook is for keeping in touch with people you used to be friends with, while twitter lets you get to know people you really ought to be friends with") argued that the film did sci-fi and noir very well separately, but failed to integrate the two styles.

I sort of see his point; that action scene in the last half hour, while endearingly silly, did seem like a very obvious 'studio add-on' to a film that was much better structured as a noir. (Even the strangers, despite being not-quite human, fit in better as an expression of noir language than science fiction language. This is probably because there is absolutely no attempt to explain the "real facts" that lie behind the story; i.e. what has happened to humanity, who are these aliens, how does their 'tuning' work?)

However, I feel that this discussion is better served if we ignore that silly action scene. WIthout that strange psy-fight, the sci-fi elements were much more subtly drawn in; they were used to create atmosphere (why is there no sun, and why does no one notice? What's the deal with homme fatale Dr. Mengele aka Jack Bauer?).

More importantly, each of the elements contribute to the story; each has a specific purpose by the end. Everything that's wrong, that's odd, that's strange, is a direct result of the Strangers' failure to understand the core of humanity.

The Action Scenes are Profoundly Gilliam-Esque

That said, while the action scenes are completely extraneous, at least they're not boring. There's something curiously retro about how the psy-fight was conducted; Rufus Sewell and Mr. Hand literally stare each other into submission, while the entire world reforms itself around them.

Curiously Satisfying Ending

The ending is wonderful precisely because it undercut everyone's expectations (we all thought John wimped out to build Shell Beach, but he creates something far more sinister in many ways).

John has the power to create the world in whatever image he chooses, and hero tropes would dictate two possible options:

1. He becomes megalomaniacal, consumed by his newfound power.
2. He does what he can to return the populous to their 'original state,' the Locke-ian, Christian ending, returning humanity to their naive state so they can start fresh, avoiding the fruit of the poison tree.

But instead, he chooses option 3, wherein he does return some beauty to the world, but still leaves it absolutely clear where they are, that they're living in an illusion.

Successful Narrative

It really shouldn't, but the narrative somehow works. Maybe because the film doesn't try to make some definitive statement about what makes a human human (though it veers dangerously close), and instead leaves us with this odd think-piece of what aliens might do to discover where our essential humanity comes from. It's quite powerful, given how often we're fed the bit about our lives being nothing more than the sum of our memories; it's a foregone conclusion in so many sci-fi films. When the memories are entirely false, then what's left?

I Miss Miniature Modelling

CGI is so much better when grounded in realistic models. The sets in Dark City are absolutely stunning, and the movement of the buildings when the city was 'tuned' was gorgeous to watch (Cobweb Diamond admitted it was done better than in Inception, and she'd never say anything bad about Inception).

On Secret Superhero Narratives

There is clearly some superhero influence here, very understated, but justified by certain events.

A Rose By Any Other Name...

The names of the Strangers make perfect sense; they are a collective mind, so they divide themselves on what they perceive to be the unique attributes of humanity: face, sleep, hand, glove, etc. Notice there's no one named emotion, or love, or fear. To them, humanity is nothing more than a sum of physical processes, mixed with memory.

On Rewatchability

This is one of those special movies that actually improves on rewatch. There's no sleight of hand, all the answers are before us if we choose to recognize them. Nothing is so obvious that your hand is tipped too son.

The Connelly Factor

How cute is Jennifer Connelly in between chubby teenager and svelte sexpot? She still has the baby fat and the curves, and looks amazing.

Separately, Connelly has made one cult classic sci-fi/fantasy film in the 1980's, and one in the 1990's. Nothing in the 2000's, so she has a lot to make up for!

Equilibrium is a movie I've tried to watch on at least five separate occasions, but some distraction always halted the viewing (boys, sleep, college, you know how it is). For whatever reason, I never got past the bit where Taye Diggs comes on screen (and continue to believe it's a tragedy when Sean Bean is killed off in the first ten minutes of any movie).

It's an incredibly silly movie that makes very little sense. So naturally I loved it, even though it's essentially a strange pastiche of every dystopian classic you can think of, with a dash of The Matrix thrown in for flavor. Society burns art and literature! Color is illegal! Emotions are banned! There's an omnipresent floating head of Sean Pertwee! It uses a newly created fake martial art called Gun-kato that was invented by the director in his backyard!

Christian Bale plays Preston, a Cleric of the Tetragrammaton (say that one time fast), who runs around catching so-called 'sense offenders' who have the temerity not to take their daily dose of super-prozac to kill their feelings. The first victim we see is Bale's partner, played by Sean Bean with far more gravitas than this movie deserves. W.B. Yeats brings tears to his eyes, so Bale brings bullets to his brain.

Guess what happens next? Bale accidentally misses a dose, and is all, whoa, sunrises are colorful and people are human. Which also leads to one of the most ludicrous scenes I have ever seen on film ever: Bale blows his cover over puppy dog eyes. A PUPPY DOG! Even in humanity today, less than half of the world believes that dogs are anything more than food. There is absolutely no basis for him to find dogs adorable without the societal conditioning that might make you value domesticated animals more than any other animal. I swear, the dog takes up the entire middle third of the movie. Culminating with a fight scene worthy of Neo, but mercifully more brief than anything in the Matrix.

So, I'm guessing this just sounds pretty awful to you so far. Well, it has a lot working in its favor. To save money, rather than use dodgy CGI, director Kurt Wimmer filmed the entire movie on location in East Berlin, and made full use of the brutalist architecture that dominates the landscape. The movie just generally looks amazing. The cast also helps in elevating the movie from being completely inane. Christian Bale in his first action hero role, Taye Diggs, Emily Watson, Sean Bean, William Fichtner. Also, and this is important: the action scenes are few, and they are SHORT, keeping my eye-rolling to a bare minimum.

So why does this movie round the circle of bad to come back to good? I just find it intensely amusing that all these very good actors looked at this script and still took the film seriously. So you get these scenes with no dialogue that have Christian Bale acting his heart out even though there's no emotional payoff or plot justification for the gravitas.

I would never have heard of this movie if one guy hadn't insisted it's the best movie ever. While that is highly revealing about his taste (or lack thereof), I'm glad I saw it. And if you watch it, just go along for the ride and don't try to think too hard.

So here we go. I'll be honest, this is the first science fiction novel I've ever reviewed (and actually the first I've read in a long, long time, unless you count the odd Philip K. Dick). I am no stranger to sci-fi, I gobble up the movies and the television shows.

The reason I've avoided science fiction novels for so long is that so much of it is in the 'space opera' tradition, which I find indulgent and irritating. For some reason, while I have no problem with the world building that goes on in fantasy novels, world-building in sci-fi is off-putting. Even in television/film, I tend to prefer sci-fi where the fictional world is different from ours in one key respect, rather than in every respect possible.

So Robert J. Sawyer seemed like a good place to resume. You may remember him as the creator of the novel that inspired the series Flashforward, which had a great concept but hilariously dire execution (though it was worth watching for Joseph Fiennes' "acting" alone). But I liked the setup: a normal world, hit by an inexplicable event, followed by human stories about how we deal with knowledge we were never meant to have.

Factoring Humanity is a much more small-scale story: we have two married (but separated) scientists at the University of Toronto working to decipher two of the most complex scientific problems of the day: Kyle works on building a quantum computer, and Heather works on deciphering cryptic alien messages from Alpha Centauri. The inciting incident, however, is much more down to earth: their estranged daughter, Becky, returns to accuse of Kyle of sexually molesting her when she was a teenager.

Naturally Kyle denies it, and Heather is inclined to believe him but is torn between the two people she loves. So what do they do? They appeal to science. Kyle's only friend is the AI test robot he calls Cheetah. In some of my favorite scenes in the novel, they have playful and witty conversations about the meaning of humanity. Heather, on the other hand, finally has a breakthrough in deciphering the alien code, which leads her to incredible discoveries that I will not spoil here.

Heather's story is certainly more compelling; we spend more time with her, get to know her desires and her quirks. And of course she's the one to build the alien machine. We get to know Kyle mainly in the reflexive sense: his character is defined mainly by how he reacts to his daughter's accusation and by how he interprets humanity for Cheetah.

There were many scenes in the novel that I enjoyed that I suspect might grind the reading to a halt for more experienced readers of science fiction. Every theory posited is explained at length, from the Many Worlds Theorem to Jungian psychology to the importance of prime factors in code-breaking. Each of these explanations were educational and interesting until they made the leaps necessary to go from, for example, hypercube tesseracts to MANIFESTATION OF ALIEN OVERMIND. I do appreciate the attempt to not just wave a magical wand and go 'wibbley wobbley timey wimey,' but I do wonder if undermines suspension of belief to explain everything so clearly up to a point and THEN wave the magic wand.

Now I couldn't put the book down; I love learning about scientific theory, and I was genuinely curious about what would happen to these characters. However, an issue I had throughout the first half was what I mentioned previously about its small scale, about the magnifying glass on one family. In a sense, this issue is resolved satisfactorily because the book maintains its humanist focus until the end, and does not try to be bigger than it is. This really is a story about one family (and first contact with aliens). But at the same time, I wish Sawyer would go further.

It's an excellent introduction to the concept, but I want to see that concept drawn on a more macro scale. The book seems to end just as it was getting started: a barely alluded to threat made by a powerful banking consortium materializes only in the final ten pages of the novel and then disappears just as uneventfully. Factoring Humanity does succeed as a stand-alone novel, but I can't help but think how much better it would function as the first novel in a trilogy or series.