The Space To Run

I don't think this blog format works very well for longer pieces, so here is The Space To Run on my dA account.

Inception and Vanishing Complexity

Recently everyone has been going crazy over Chris Nolan's new supposed masterpiece Inception. I saw the movie last week and I must say it was very well done, however I do not think it is nearly as original and brilliant as some enthusiastic reviewers say. The story was actually quite simple and nowhere near as complex and far-reaching as something like The Matrix or Fight Club. The appeal is very personal and psychological, as is Chris Nolan's style, but I digress. The reason I believe there is such praise for this movie is quite simple. People want to be made to think. This is what Nolan's popularity really conveys to me, as this is a thought-provoking movie, but not extremely so. I think that, at least at some level, people are just so sick of being presented with simplistic action or romance that is completely transparent. This has been the case over and over again in the past few years. There is a trend toward less thought-provoking movies. Last year saw a couple sci-fi gems come out in the form of District 9 and Moon. This year Inception is the only movie I have been willing to see in theaters. This trend towards less complex and unique movie plots really makes me wonder if people actually do want less thinking and more visceral stimuli as entertainment. Then I look at the popularity of "reality" television and know it must be true. A wise man did once say that people would rather be content to live in ignorance and stupidity than go through the labor of gaining more knowledge. Is this contentedness positive or negative? A small part of me wants to have sympathy for those who wish this kind of contentment, but I know if everyone was content to remain ignorant our country and our civilization would not have gotten very far in the first place.

Red Mars and Cyberpunk

I recently finished reading Red Mars, the first book of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy and let me tell you, it's pretty damn good. The reason I wanted to get this book is really because I've become very interested in cyberpunk literature. About a year or so ago I was fortunate enough to see Rudy Rucker, author of some well-known sci-fi books such as White Light and the Ware tetralogy, give a lecture at RIT and he really got me thinking more about writing, science fiction, technology, and the world around us. I had never heard of Rucker before but I heard he was a great writer, so I had to go. He was not lecturing specifically on the topic of cyberpunk, but rather his computer science ideas of interpreting the world as deterministic equations, however he did mention his writing and that it was considered cyberpunk. Overall the lecture was very interesting and I left with a lot to think about. Afterwards I began looking up some things about cyberpunk online, what it is, what writers are involved, etc. I am a huge fan of dystopian/utopian stories so this sounded right up my alley. I obtained a copy of Red Mars as soon as I could and prepared from some great adventures. And at first I was confused. This book was supposed to be cyberpunk but the first half of it or so is mostly about scientists colonizing Mars. Not that this was boring, the way Robinson writes is very personal and gets right into the characters' heads which makes for some intense reading, but it wasn't what I expected. However in the second half when politics and violence start coming into play on the newly colonized planet, I began to understand why it is considered cyberpunk: you've got a revolution taking place on a very inhospitable planet and led by scientists who can create things such as extremely potent pharmaceutical drugs and longevity treatments. Another thing that struck me in this book is the attention that was paid to scientific and geographic details, especially the ones referring to the terraforming and colonization of Mars. I cannot wait to read the second book; this is science fiction at its best.