A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay.com No doubt that there’s been some big Star Wars news this week! Friday was the 41st anniversary of the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope , and so the birthday of the entire franchise. The day before, Solo: A Star Wars Story released in theatres. I haven’t seen this new Star Wars film yet but plan to tomorrow. But in celebration of the new movie I thought it would be neat to list four of my favourite space opera books that’s central characters share the same swashbuckling, rogue archetype as the Han Solo character does. Han Solo’s archetype, or primal character-type, combines traits of the cowboy, the pirate and the wandering adventurer. Characters who have these traits are often loners of a sort, are daring and don’t let the law stop them from doing what they feel they have to. Often the legal system that they defy is one that is set up by a corrupt establishment and, in the case of space operas, that establishment is often an empire. Even tho...

It has no skin! Or does it? This sculpture of an alien is said to be from the H.R. Giger Museum. Photo Credit: Pixabay.com I finally saw A Quiet Place yesterday evening. It was really good in almost all aspects. T he story to this film was not made to be merely an audience pleaser. This was an intelligently made movie with well-developed characters and a well-written storyline. But the monsters were designed terribly. So as not to create any spoilers I won’t go into too many details, but at many points in the film the monsters looked like they were cut open in parts of their bodies. I know that’s been a major characteristic in the creatures of horror films ever since Alien in the late ‘70s, but it’s been over done too many times. I’m not against the design of the Alien movies’ exoskeleton creatures that’s muscle tissues seem to be exposed. In fact, the first movie has been one of my favourites among sci fi horror. But those monsters were Ridley Scott and H.R. Gige...

The Black Panther movie adaptation, based on the Marvel comic book of the same name, has been getting more recognition than I recently thought and that’s definitely a good thing! It is probably the big budget sci fi movie that stars black characters and made by a black director (Ryan Coogler) that has broken the most records. It definitely shows that people of colour are becoming acknowledged for their work in speculative genres. It’s bringing to light the sci fi/fantasy community among people of colour, breaking the too long-time impression of the genre being a white person’s. Along with that, it’s also bringing to light the speculative movement known as Afrofuturism and so making the movement less marginalised. Afrofuturism is the intellectual movement of scientific and technological speculation by people of African culture. That’s probably too simple of a definition. However, an article at BBC.com entitled “Afrofuturism:Why black science fiction can’t be ignored” explains it rea...

Credit: Pixabay.com The problem with many sci fi movies today, as they have been in most of movie history, is that they are either made to amuse or they’re made to provoke thought about important issues in life. Ready Player One , however, does both. Ready Player One is based on Earnest Cline’s ‘80s novel of the same name. It’s about a teenager, Wade Watts (played by Tye Sheridan) in a near-future Earth who competes in a VR game set in a world called the Oasis. He comes across the scheme of an evil corporate CEO by the name of Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) who is trying to take control of the Oasis in order to rule the real world. The Oasis is a kind of open source fictional world where anyone can play any character they want and anything can happen. I have not read the novel and so won’t try to compare it to the movie. But regardless of how faithful it is to the book, Ready Player One was made really good. Even though a certain segment of the film gets a littl...