Dear Mr. Spielberg
Sam’s final words actually came out of automaton’s mouth. I was explaining to him how, after Schindler’s List, I read about how Steven Spielberg became involved with a lot of different projects, but still managed to make time for his family. Also that his time for the next few years was likely booked and Robopocalypse was the only sci fi from Steven he was likely to see. automaton was not pleased with this.
I don’t think we’ve yet conveyed in a comic his insatiable hunger for sci fi. He’s a junkie and I’m one of his enablers. If there’s a sci fi movie coming out, no matter how bad it seems, I will go see it with him. I once began writing a science fiction short story for him which he deemed, “too old tech, not enough new tech.” I can only help him so much.
Please reach out to him people. Papa needs his hit. Steven just ain’t gonna provide enough for him. I’m going to give you some ground rules:
- No short stories
- No movies prior to 1980
- He’s read many classic sci fi books, so less Neuromancer, War of the Worlds, Foundation titles, more fringe titles with a good pace, like The Gate to Women’s Country
Steven can call his BFF George, who always has a good sci-fi idea.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381940/ Cargo
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/ Sunshine
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/ Moon
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1188729/ Pandorum
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/ Children of Men (not as “pure” sci fi)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0238380/ Equilibrium
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ Gattaca
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414993/ The Fountain
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212720/ A.I. (oh, I guess that’s speilberg)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120201/ Starship Troopers
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/ Dark City
okay getting lazy now – Blade Runner, Total Recall, Robocop, all the alien movies (particularly 1,2, and 4), Neuromancer is great but check out Gibson’s newer stuff it is amazing- Idoru, Zero History, Spook Country, etc! , Dark City, Source Code, Clockwork Orange (I know, no pre-1980 but that is a silly stipulation), Pitch Black / Chronicles of Riddick, ummm… well… hopefully at least some of these automaton hasn’t seen !
hey thanks for the well formatted list. i especially appreciate the IMDB links. i’ve seen most of them on your lists, but i have not seen pandorum or cargo, so i will check those out. also i recently bought the neuromancer book, so i will read that before watching the film (is there a film)?
other than that, i agree with all of your suggestions. and i actually think children of men is sci-fi, though ya it’s not space-based, but it’s still good. the riddick series i enjoyed, though, perhaps more than i should have.
I would recommend giving Thomas Pynchon’s “Against the Day” a try. It kind of reads like it was written by a pot-smoking Jules Verne high on cough syrup after reading a couple of math textbooks (one subplots involves Quaternions vs. Vector analysis) and anarchist pamphlets.
Either way, it’s a pretty long book (>1000 pages) and once you finish it, you have the legal right to become very smug. It’s also really, really funny (not as funny as this web comic, but still). NB the action takes place between 1890 and 1920, so this is not SF in the classical sense, it’s more like retrograde SF. But had it been written back then, it would have been bona fide SF.
If that doesn’t help, I suggest Otherland – it’s a lot less funny and doesn’t have any math references, but on the other hand it’s even longer (somewhere between 3000 and 4000 pages), and the author still must have done something funny to his brain to come up with all those far-out ideas. I think it was written by Tad Williams.
If you’re not afraid to go for real trash, give “Leprechaun 4” a try, which literally is Leprechaun in space. A giant Leprechaun in space, actually. The entire concept is so bizarre you can even ignore the cheap special effects as well as the horrible acting.
I hope any of this helps.
hey thanks a lot for the suggestions. i’ll check it out.
although i’m a little scared of leprechaun 4. can it really survive in space? how does that even work?
Strictly speaking, the Leprechaun is on board of a space ship, which in turn is in space. (So are a bunch of humans which get killed off one by one, and if I remember correctly, there is some kind of mad scientist thrown in just for good measure; but I’m not 100% sure, it’s been a while since I’ve seen that one.) In the end, I think the Leprechaun got blown out into space from the ship’s cargo bay and dies.
While we’re talking about trashy movies, if you have not seen it, give Star Force Soldier a try, for a trash SF movie, it’s pretty good actually, it’s got character development and some decent acting. Kurt Russel plays this super soldier that one day becomes obsolete when the government introduces a new generation of genetically engineered super-super soldiers. So poor Kurt gets dumped on a planet that is essentially one giant garbage dump. He is taken in by people living there and learns about some (to him) entirely new concepts such kindness and love.
Then the government decides to have their new-and-shiny super-super soldiers have a go at that garbage planet, and Kurt is just at the right place at the right time to defend his new friends against the invaders and get his revenge for being literally thrown out with the garbage.
At the end there is this magnificient scene where Kurt – holding a child in his arms – meets his former comrades, and one of them manages to say, just by giving Kurt a quick once-over, “You are holding a child?! But Sir, that is not our way!”, and Kurt replies – again, just by giving his buddy a quick look – “Well, I’ve learnt that I can be both a tough and fearsome warrior and a kind and caring substitute-father for this little child; got a problem with that?” – that scene alone makes the entire movie worth watching in my humble opinion.
You probably have already seen it, but I’m still going to recommend Farscape, just in case. It’s an Australian series, so most of the actors have this lovely accent, plus it has a well-balanced combination of fast-paced action and humor that sat rather well with me.
farscape sounds interesting, and i have not seen it. thanks!
Don’t know how you feel about comedic sci-fi but if If you’re looking for a humorous tongue-in-cheek parody I’d recommend ‘Redshirts’ by John Scalzi. Just remember, as you read, that someone, somewhere out there is wearing a red shirt… and their horrible death by ice shark, or by harpoon launching killer robots, or Borgovian Land Worms awaits them.
http://boingboing.net/2012/06/05/scalzis-redshirts.html
First five chapters can be found here http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/03/redshirts-prologue-chapter-1-a-2-excerpt