Joe Nolan's Insomnia » science fiction

Adieu Ellison

Joe Nolan — Tue, 03 Jul 2018 21:18:40 +0000

Harlan Ellison was a firebrand author of New Wave speculative fiction who wrote everything from sci-fi to fantasy, short stories, novels, television shows, film criticism and much more. Ellison’s “The City on the Edge of Forever” is widely-recognized as the best episode in the original Star Trek series and his Outer Limits episode, “Soldier,” was the inspiration for The Terminator. Ellison’s Dangerous Visions anthologies defined the edge of speculative fiction for two decades, and he was also an early champion of the writing of Octavia Butler. Ellison was an outrageously prolific writer, a champion for author rights, and he won the Hugo eight times. He was also something of a professional asshole and his groping the breast of fellow writer, Connie Willis, and his violent tendency to punch first and ask questions later in at least a few cases has writers wringing their hands at Ellison’s legacy. Again, Ellison was an asshole. He was also an inspiration to two generations of writers and a tireless champion to those who benefited from his lifetime of activism. He was a complicated man with a complicated life, and he’s probably the last person who’d want his story to end neatly tied-up in a bow.

Here’s a great “Masters of Fantasy” episode about the irascible scribe…

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Sharp New Blade

Joe Nolan — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 05:26:18 +0000

I saw a media screening of Blade Runner 2049 on Monday night. Just so you know, it’s a very good addition to the Blade Runner universe that connects to the first film as well as one might ever expect. It differs from the Ridley Scott film in that it’s less of a pulp noir (especially compared to the theatrically-released version of the original), and it’s more self aware of its own philosophical reflections — but not in a manner that gets in the way of characters or stories or the insanely realized moods of this outrageously cinematic, future-fiction opera. Even thirty years after the events in the original Blade Runner, this new film is still as much about a place drenched in shadows as it is about humans and replicants, and the line that separates the two.

I’m not going to write a regular review for this exceptional movie. After the screening, Denis Villeneuve and Warner Brothers sent us off with a lengthy list of things they didn’t want us to write about even though the film’s review embargo had been lifted. With that in mind, I’m going to blast away free form at different aspects of the film as they come to mind.

Old is New Again

The moods and atmosphere of the original film are on full display here, but this is an updated version of a new new Los Angeles. Between the first movie and this film an EMP attack knocks out the power grid and erases all data, and the environmental collapse that resulted in all of the extinct animals in Blade Runner becomes a crushing famine. A new breed of reliable replicant slaves and genetically modified crops save humanity from extinction. The setting of the new film looks different to account for the changes that have occurred since the last movie, but it also looks different because of all of the advances in digital effects since Ridley Scott’s first film. Even though this new movie is a slicker product in that regard, it still maintains the gritty sense of place that the first movie captured so well, and 2049‘s viewers will feel right at home in this new film.

The characters and the acting in this new Blade Runner are consistently strong and even Gosling’s limited range is used to maximum effect here. A lot of the restrictions the filmmakers asked for limit how much I’m willing to say about the players on this new stage, but all the performances are mostly pitch perfect. Even though I thought Jared Leto’s villain was under-utilized, the new characters are great additions to the Blade Runner universe, and they’re all realized with consistently inspired performances by this contemporary cast. Again, I won’t say too much, but the returns from the original cast are very good here as well.

Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival was a very strong, but overrated alien visitation flick — it showcased the director’s visual style, but the story and some of the effects were ultimately too ham-fisted for the serious meditation on intergalactic communication that the film’s most ardent fans would have you believe it to be. Arrival is a good movie. It’s not a great film. Blade Runner 2049 is a great film, and it’s a great sequel. It’s so good that I’m afraid we’ll get another Blade Runner sequel. That film will be a disaster.

That said, if you’re planning to see Blade Runner 2049, I recommend re-watching the original. I also recommend watching these three prequel shorts to get properly oriented for this next long, strange trip…

Blade Runner 2049-”2020: Blackout”

Blade Runner 2049-”2036: Nexus Dawn”

Blade Runner 2049-”2048: Nowhere to Run”

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Into The Veldt

Joe Nolan — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 03:56:17 +0000

Yesterday I was thinking about all the ideas and visions and ambitions that are reshaping Nashville and other cities all over the country as suburbanites push to urban cores and gentrification becomes the only game in town. So often what we want isn’t what we need or even what we thought we wanted once we have it, but then it’s too late.

Science fiction is full of these cautionary tales about wishes come true, and one of my favorites is “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury. Here’s the Wiki…

“The Veldt” is a short story written by American author Ray Bradbury. Originally appearing as “The World the Children Made” in the 23 September 1950 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, it was republished under its current name in the 1951 anthology The Illustrated Man.

The Hadley family lives in an automated house called “The Happylife Home,” filled with machines that do everything for them from cooking meals, to clothing them, to rocking them to sleep. The two children, Peter and Wendy (their names a homage to Peter Pan and Wendy Darling[1]), become fascinated with the “nursery,” a virtual reality room that is able to connect with the children telepathically to reproduce any place they imagine.

The parents, George and Lydia, soon wonder if there is something wrong with their way of life. Lydia tells George, “That’s just it. I feel like I don’t belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot.”[2] They are also perplexed and confused that the nursery is stuck on an African setting, with lions in the distance, eating the dead carcass of some sort of animal. There they also find recreations of their personal belongings and hear strangely familiar screams.

The Canadian-produced anthology television series The Ray Bradbury Theater included the story, scripted by Bradbury, as Episode #29 (Season 4, Episode 11). It was first broadcast 10 November 1989, and starred Linda Kelsey, Malcolm Stewart, Shana Alexander, and Thomas Peacocke.

Here is “The Veldt”…

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Making a Monolith

Joe Nolan — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 00:45:51 +0000

In the late 1960′s, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke teamed-up to create what is generally acknowledged as the greatest science fiction film ever made, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, Taschen has released their massive tome about the making of the film, and its pages capture all the spirit, effects, sets, costumes, concepts and the impact on its audiences of this unprecedented cinematic vision.

The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s ’2001: A Space Odyssey’
was born from a partnership between the Kubrick Estate, Paris-based design agency M/M, and writer Piers Bizony. The resulting volume is a massive, weighty black bound book shaped like the iconic monolith from the film. This version of the book contains all of Bizony’s writing from the Limited Edition version. The tall, skinny pages are full of tiny print — it makes the dense reading difficult to manage, but Bizony’s years of acclaimed, groundbreaking research make it worth the effort.

The text sections are broken up by loads of photographs from the set and stills from the movie. Concept drawings and painted designs offer first glimpses of the film they inspired and close-up stills of instrument panels, costume details and architectural flourishes constitute a kind of pornography for Kubrick geeks who’ll pore over every detail.

There are a lot of fold-out images here, which is novel and adds a sense of discovery to the leafing, but, like the reading, it’s also a little awkward and the thin paper had me nervous about tears when I first cracked this one. Taschen actually offers a fascinating apology for this and it’s worth quoting. You could call this The Making of The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey…

It is very rare that our design approach takes such an individual and strong position, since we usually strive not to steal the show to our contents/artists/artworks, but rather serve all our subjects with subtlety. In this case however, we agreed after a longer discussion (which included the publisher, the author, and also the Kubrick Estate) that simply reproducing the surface of this fabulous movie in a conventional, glossy book wouldn’t do justice to the more profound reflections that are inherent to Kubrick’s masterpiece – which can be perceived as “cold” in some regards in its monolithic, uncompromising execution, or even “brutal”.

So our designers – M/M (Paris) – conceived the book like an entire symphony of fold-outs (preferably experienced with the Blue Danube playing in the background), which requires active intervention by the reader, rather than the “classic” leaned-back consumption. We were convinced that this approach would do justice to Stanley Kubrick’s vision and methods, since 2OO1: A Space Odyssey (by the way also produced in the same unusual – horizontal – aspect ratio) was never intended to be an ordinary, shallowly consumable experience in the first place.

Actually, the book and its pages have held-up just fine and when the book is in its protective slip cover it looks great displayed length-wise on a shelf, making this volume a great conversation piece for any film lover. Despite the difficulties posed by the design, this book is challenging, beautiful and unique, just like its subject.

Gentleman Cybernaut

Joe Nolan — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 18:07:17 +0000

Today I have 1013 followers on Twitter, but last night I had 997. The milestone seemed like an opportunity to interact with some folks and get some help scrambling over the hump.

A while back, a literary journal I review books for was in a similar position: The folks in charge of their funding were coming to town and they wanted to show off 1K Facebook friends — they were already pretty close, but still 30 or so off the night before the big visit.

I took to Twitter and started messaging about the journal, linking to the Facebook page. For some reason, in the midst of my messaging, I thought “I should ask William Gibson to retweet this message to his followers. He’s a writer. He’ll get it. He’ll want to help.” There was no reason for William Gibson to help or even notice the message in his stream, but he did notice it, and he helped. Following Gibson’s RT the site’s Facebook page was well over the 1K mark by morning.

Yesterday night I messaged William Gibson again asking if he might give me a hand with an RT. He did. He’s a writer. He gets it.

Thanks again @GreatDismal!

Gibson’s latest book is The Peripheral Here’s the description on the Amazon page:

Where Flynne and her brother, Burton, live, jobs outside the drug business are rare. Fortunately, Burton has his veteran’s benefits, for neural damage he suffered from implants during his time in the USMC’s elite Haptic Recon force. Then one night Burton has to go out, but there’s a job he’s supposed to do—a job Flynne didn’t know he had. Beta-testing part of a new game, he tells her. The job seems to be simple: work a perimeter around the image of a tower building. Little buglike things turn up. He’s supposed to get in their way, edge them back. That’s all there is to it. He’s offering Flynne a good price to take over for him. What she sees, though, isn’t what Burton told her to expect. It might be a game, but it might also be murder.

And in keeping with recent posts, here’s Gibson at the Chicago Humanities Festival last November discussing “Technology, Science Fiction & the Apocalypse.”

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Arthur C. Clarke and the Unexplained

Joe Nolan — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 06:10:11 +0000

Today we celebrate the birthday of Arthur C. Clarke. We lost Clarke in March of 2008. Before that, Clarke discovered an ancient temple while scuba diving in Sri Lanka, invented the geosynchronous communications satellite, penned the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey with Stanley Kubrick, and — along with Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov — established himself as one of the three great titans in the field of science fiction during the genre’s second golden age.

Clarke seemed to master everything he turned his attention to, but his cross-discipline expertise never found him loosing his imagination or his sense of curiosity. If anyone might have understandably thought to himself “I have all the answers” that guy would have been Arthur C. Clarke — but Arthur C. Clarke wasn’t that guy.

To prove the point, Clarke lent his name to and hosted three different BBC series that investigated unexplained phenomena: Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers, and Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious Universe. One can imagine the science writer and the fiction author within Clarke reaching an impasse and declaring a draw on subjects like the supernatural, cryptozoology and the possibility of alien life.

Here is a great YouTube playlist featuring episodes from all of Clarke’s series and offering an opportunity to spend time with this brilliantly intelligent and ceaselessly wondering man…

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Unfinished Kubrick

Joe Nolan — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 05:03:42 +0000

On November 28, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was re-released in remastered, digital form in the UK. I haven’t been able to confirm when it will be screening in the U.S. but I’m hoping that some form of BFI’s sci-fi celebration will be making its way to the states soon.

While the spacefaring film might be the greatest of the director’s towering, groundbreaking achievements, even Kubrick had his off-days, and this documentary about the films he attempted to make can only leave us wondering at the places Napoleon, The Aryan Papers or the original A.I. may have assumed within the master’s pantheon…

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Harlan Ellison Troll Hunter

Joe Nolan — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 05:50:16 +0000

Harlan Ellison is one of the greatest authors of science fiction and fantasy ever. He’s written more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays as well as criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. He edited and anthologized two groundbreaking science fiction collections, Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison has won multiple multiple Hugos, Nebulas and Edgar awards.

In 1993, Ellison was tapped by the then-nascent SciFi Channel to provide commentary on the science fiction scene during it’s “Sci-Fi Buzz” segments. In this seventh installment, Ellison rails against internet trolls on “PC bulletin boards” three years before I had my own desktop computer. The man has always been ahead of his time…

A few weeks ago Ellison suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. According to this Los Angeles Times story, he’s already improving and complaining and ranting the way only he can. Here’s to a speedy recovery, Mr. Ellison. See you back at the front.

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Celebrating Ed Wood

Joe Nolan — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 04:55:42 +0000

Continuing our string of spooky October posts, today we celebrate the birthday of filmmaker Ed Wood who was born on October 10, 1924. Wood died of a heart attack at the age of 54, but first he made a series of science fiction and monster films that weren’t so much scary as they were scary-bad.

Wood also challenged social taboos like transgenderism way back in 1953 with his first film Glen or Glenda which was based on the life Christine Jorgensen and Wood’s own predilections for transvestism — if Wood’s monster movies failed to spook his sympathetic treatment of LGBT issues at the dawn of the Eisenhower Era was a true shocker.

Wood’s camp aesthetics have garnered him a cult following, but here at Insomnia we love Wood because he was a true Hollywood dreamer who imagined himself to be an immortal filmmaker before actually becoming one.

Here’s a BBC Channel 4 documentary about Wood, his odd life and his terribly memorable films…

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