"somebody" <x### [at] ycom> writes:

>> > I would say it's *entirely* unbelievable. Why on earth (or moon) would a
>> > company probably worth multi trillions of dollars not able to afford to
> keep
>> > a crew of more than one person on their  base? Does it make sense to any
>
>> Who said they can't afford it?
>
> Are you suggesting that a company supplying clean, practically limitless
> energy to the whole world cannot afford a couple of manned moon launches per
> year? I did not realize the energy business was so hard to make a buck in.
> Maybe we should start a donation fund to help our poor oil companies...

Who said they can't afford it?

> On a practical matter, the spacious accomodations on the base that look like
> it could easily house 20, with leather, upholstered furniture, real wood to
> carve... etc don't quite give me the impression of a cash stapped operation.

Who said it was cash strapped?

>> > reasonable businessman, not to mention paranoid shareholders, to trust
> all
>> > your company marbles to the sanity and physical health of a single
> human?
>
>> If it's been tested, yes.
>
> No. It's something not even worth testing. You never ever do that, period.

An opinion is not a fact.

> Even our tiny little company has a policy against key personnel traveling
> together. Do yo realize how much paranoid risk assessment goes in mega
> corporations?

Well, let's see. You start off a thread complaining about a science
fiction movie, and then you insist on rules that follow a subset of
today's businesses.

Who's being uncreative here?

>> > Why go through all the trouble (ethical, legal, technical, logistic)
> trouble
>> > of using self-destructing clones, when shipping a proper and healthy
> crew
>> > every six months or so would probably be even cheaper and without all
> the
>
>> Why assume that it is unethical?
>
> Because to assume otherwise (ie. clones engineered to die after 3 years is
> perfectly acceptable) goes against everything we know and believe. Plus, to

"We"? 

You must live in a small world.

> assume otherwise invalidates the point of the movie: If it's perfectly
> acceptable to do that, the movie becomes pointless and devoid of conflict
> for the audience.

So, there's little that goes on that is "unacceptable" in our world?

>> Why assume it is cheaper?
>
> It's cheaper in the long run when you consider the risks. Granted, I'm not

The risks have not been established. What risks?

> about to perform a real cost analysis. But at a first approximation, it's
> cheaper for the same reason a company hires a qualified engineer for 10
> times the cost of a bum on the street. When you are talking about running a
> billion dollar factory, you don't try to cut huge corners for extremely
> short term gains, if any.

It seems you're making wild assumptions about the costs. 

>> > risks? Plus, if you are going through all that trouble, why give your
> HAL
>> > clone an Asimovian conscience so it can screw up things royally when the
>
>> Perhaps because the clones function better with it?
>
> You are reaching. 

You are assuming.

> If anything, the clones would function better if "HAL"
> stuck to the official company line. Also, it can be argued that even an

I take it you're an expert on clones?

> Asimovian robot would lie in that situation to maximize the happiness of the
> poor soul before his inevitable death.

I don't recall: Did they say anywhere in the movie that it has to follow
the three laws of robotics?

>> > inevitable comes? (BTW, if you are going to rip off so many pieces from
>> > previous movies, at least try to improve on them. Compared to the
> original,
>> > the new HAL's lines and voice acting was beyond forgettable. What were
> they
>> > thinking? That the silly smiley faces would somehow make up for its
> utter
>> > lack of character?)
>
>> Set up a strawman, then blow it down. Congratulations!
>
> Huh?

Your assumption that they were trying to rip off much from other
movies. 

>> > It seems that the whole operation is automated, except for taking a full
>> > canister from the harvester and putting it into the launcher, which
> their
>> > engineers conveniently forgot to automate. Speaking of the launcher, it
>
>> By watching snippets of a few weeks of his life,
>
> There's no real "Moon" world to objectively analyze. Our mind model is
> solely based on the movie we are presented with. If you start adding extra
> information to the movie, you are making *another* movie.

Yes, and it takes a wise person to know when not to analyze if there
isn't sufficient information.

>> you managed to figure
>> out the whole operation the company is running. Very perceptive.
>
> I am not under obligation to *imagine* that he has additional, more
> important jobs. If the moviemakers wanted me to believe that, they would
> have to have *shown* me. Since they did not, it's their failing either way,

If the moviemakers had deemed your knowing that as relevant, yes. 

>> > that they remembered about the lunar gravity). Instantenous earth moon
>> > videoconferencing (everyone and their dog knows there's a minimum of
> just
>> > over 2 sec delay) shows that they could not be bothered to look up even
> the
>
>> This may have been a slipup, although I have no memory of it. The only
>> Earth to moon conversation I recall was with the robot - and I don't
>> actually remember it.
>
> He calls "his" wife (and talks to the daughter). I'm surprised you did not
> explain this away too by saying the parties deliberately started talking 2-3
> seconds before the other party finished.

Frankly, don't recall whether there was a delay or not. But still,
perhaps a valid flaw. I'll take it over loud explosions in space any
day.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I prefer reserving "science fiction" for those stories that are about the
> affect of science on people rather than merely stories about people in the
> future.

This.

Post a reply to this message

4c1547ff$1@news.povray.org...
> I just like making the distinction between "science fiction" and "fantasy 
> set in the future".   Fifth Element is fantasy set in the future, not 
> science fiction.
The problem with that definition is that is probably excludes most of what 
has been produced, sold and accepted by the public under that name, from the 
pulp stuff written to titillate teenage boys (monsters! titties!) to the 
works of many famous SF writers. Bradbury was never about science, and 
neither were Dick, Farmer, Herbert, Van Vogt etc. Hard SF where science is 
the topic rather that the facilitator / pretext is really a subgenre rather 
than the norm. Likewise, movie SF is rather about eye candy and occasionally 
challenging ideas than science. "A clockwork orange" is one of the most 
powerful and influential SF movie ever, except that there's 0 science in it. 
There's not much science in 2001 either, btw.
Really, the label "science fiction" was basically a marketing trick design 
to attract readers at a time when "science" was a catch-all term (see 
"scientology" or "Christian science" for similar abuses of the word). In 
other words, the "science" in science fiction never actually meant science, 
except for a few science-minded writers.

G.

Post a reply to this message

"Neeum Zawan" <fee### [at] festercom> wrote in message
news:87w### [at] festercom...
> "somebody" <x### [at] ycom> writes:

> > Are you suggesting that a company supplying clean, practically limitless
> > energy to the whole world cannot afford a couple of manned moon launches
per
> > year? I did not realize the energy business was so hard to make a buck
in.
> > Maybe we should start a donation fund to help our poor oil companies...

> Who said they can't afford it?

If it's not a monetary decision, what then?

> > Even our tiny little company has a policy against key personnel
traveling
> > together. Do yo realize how much paranoid risk assessment goes in mega
> > corporations?

> Well, let's see. You start off a thread complaining about a science
> fiction movie, and then you insist on rules that follow a subset of
> today's businesses.
>
> Who's being uncreative here?

Today's business rules, human and corporate behaviour evolved for a reason.
They will surely keep evolving. However, fundamentals don't change.
Operating with utmost safety in mission critical applications is not ever
going to go out of fashion. Sci-fi is not to be a genre where anything goes,
however illogical.

> >> Why assume that it is unethical?

> > Because to assume otherwise (ie. clones engineered to die after 3 years
is
> > perfectly acceptable) goes against everything we know and believe. Plus,
to

> "We"?

Yes. I posit that 99.9% of surveyed would say that that's not ethical, and
that warrants the generalization of "we".

> > assume otherwise invalidates the point of the movie: If it's perfectly
> > acceptable to do that, the movie becomes pointless and devoid of
conflict
> > for the audience.

> So, there's little that goes on that is "unacceptable" in our world?

No. But I'm pretty certain that, say, MS does not kill off its programmers
who are past their prime productivity to avoid costs. In fact, give me one
example of a company that actually did that at any point. If it's not
something I can buy today, it's not something I can buy tomorrow, not
without an extraordinarily solid explanation and backstory, no matter how
paranoid one is of megacorps.

> > If anything, the clones would function better if "HAL"
> > stuck to the official company line. Also, it can be argued that even an

> I take it you're an expert on clones?

At least as much as the makers of that movie.

> > Asimovian robot would lie in that situation to maximize the happiness of
the
> > poor soul before his inevitable death.

> I don't recall: Did they say anywhere in the movie that it has to follow
> the three laws of robotics?

You were the one who suggested clones might function better with such caring
robots.

> >> > the new HAL's lines and voice acting was beyond forgettable. What
were
> > they
> >> > thinking? That the silly smiley faces would somehow make up for its
> > utter
> >> > lack of character?)

> >> Set up a strawman, then blow it down. Congratulations!

> > Huh?

> Your assumption that they were trying to rip off much from other
> movies.

It's an observation, and a very trivial one. I know you like being contrary,
but surely even you are not going to argue that the robot (among many other
things) is not a direct rip off from 2001? And I am sure opening the scene
with an astronaut on a threadmill was also a coincidence.... etc

> >> By watching snippets of a few weeks of his life,

> > There's no real "Moon" world to objectively analyze. Our mind model is
> > solely based on the movie we are presented with. If you start adding
extra
> > information to the movie, you are making *another* movie.

> Yes, and it takes a wise person to know when not to analyze if there
> isn't sufficient information.

It's a movie. It's self contained. And it's sufficient information. If I'm
presented with "insufficient information" in a movie, it's the director's
fault. I'm not about to pull him out of the water by assuming that the
"sufficient information" would make the movie make sense, had he bothered
show it to me.

> >> you managed to figure
> >> out the whole operation the company is running. Very perceptive.

> > I am not under obligation to *imagine* that he has additional, more
> > important jobs. If the moviemakers wanted me to believe that, they would
> > have to have *shown* me. Since they did not, it's their failing either
way,

> If the moviemakers had deemed your knowing that as relevant, yes.

Exactly. We can conclude that the director though out guy doesn't do
anything else relevant. We see him sleeping, working out (several times),
building models (several scenes), banging an alarm clock (couple of
different times)... etc. Obviously, it's not as if the director ran out of
celluloid before he could show us the really "important" jobs he does on the
base. We thus conclude that he has shown all that is relevant, and he
doesn't really do anything more demanding than carrying canisters back and
forth.

Post a reply to this message

Gilles Tran wrote:
> The problem with that definition is that is probably excludes most of what 
> has been produced, sold and accepted by the public under that name, 

Sadly true.

> "A clockwork orange" is one of the most 
> powerful and influential SF movie ever, except that there's 0 science in it. 

I've never heard that called science fiction.  Is 1984 also considered to be 
science fiction?

> There's not much science in 2001 either, btw.

In the book there is, certainly. You can't tell the story of 2001 without 
aliens setting up a monolith.

> Really, the label "science fiction" was basically a marketing trick design 
> to attract readers at a time when "science" was a catch-all term (see 
> "scientology" or "Christian science" for similar abuses of the word). In 
> other words, the "science" in science fiction never actually meant science, 
> except for a few science-minded writers.

Sadly true.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

4c17a43c$1@news.povray.org...
> Gilles Tran wrote:
>> The problem with that definition is that is probably excludes most of 
>> what has been produced, sold and accepted by the public under that name,
>
> Sadly true.

Really I don't feel that sad at all. As a literary genre, what makes SF 
special is that it does not have the formal constraints of other genres when 
it comes to describe a particular universe, though it can freely borrow 
tropes from other genres. At its best, it's a playground for ideas and 
concepts that cannot be expressed in other normal settings. For instance, 
Dick's SF is mostly about what defines reality and our perception of it. 
People use spaceships in his novels but that's ancillary: SF was just the 
best vessel for what he had to tell. Ditto for Bradbury (who doesn't like to 
be called a science fiction writer) and a whole lot of major SF authors. 
Science are just one of the topics that SF can talk about. Most SF is using 
handwavium and unobtainium because it's usually about something else, and 
more than often that something is related to the issues of the time.

>> "A clockwork orange" is one of the most powerful and influential SF movie 
>> ever, except that there's 0 science in it.
> I've never heard that called science fiction.  Is 1984 also considered to 
> be science fiction?

It's right there in Wikipedia in any case, filed both under "social SF" or 
"dystopian  SF". Of course everybody knew in 1948 that 1984 was all about 
communism and fascism so it's better known as a political work.

> In the book there is, certainly. You can't tell the story of 2001 without 
> aliens setting up a monolith.

True, but lots of the sci-fi thingies described in the novel, like the alien 
Grand Central Station and the atomic bomb at the end, were left out of the 
movie for a good reason: this made the movie more puzzling, ambiguous and 
intellectually stimulating than the novel ever was.

G.

Post a reply to this message

"somebody" <x### [at] ycom> writes:

> "Neeum Zawan" <fee### [at] festercom> wrote in message
> news:87w### [at] festercom...
>> "somebody" <x### [at] ycom> writes:
>
>> > Are you suggesting that a company supplying clean, practically limitless
>> > energy to the whole world cannot afford a couple of manned moon launches
> per
>> > year? I did not realize the energy business was so hard to make a buck
> in.
>> > Maybe we should start a donation fund to help our poor oil companies...
>
>> Who said they can't afford it?
>
> If it's not a monetary decision, what then?

I didn't say I knew. Nor do I see the relevance. It's not really a major
aspect of the plot. 

Sure, if you make unneeded assumptions, the movie will indeed seem
stupid.

>> Well, let's see. You start off a thread complaining about a science
>> fiction movie, and then you insist on rules that follow a subset of
>> today's businesses.
>>
>> Who's being uncreative here?
>
> Today's business rules, human and corporate behaviour evolved for a reason.

Yes, because business rules the world over are uniform, right?

> They will surely keep evolving. However, fundamentals don't change.
> Operating with utmost safety in mission critical applications is not ever
> going to go out of fashion. Sci-fi is not to be a genre where anything goes,

Eh? It's rarely been /in/ fashion. Both in recent history and long term
history. People have been disposable in the past. I fail to see any
fundamental reason for that not happening again.

>> >> Why assume that it is unethical?
>
>> > Because to assume otherwise (ie. clones engineered to die after 3 years
> is
>> > perfectly acceptable) goes against everything we know and believe. Plus,
> to
>
>> "We"?
>
> Yes. I posit that 99.9% of surveyed would say that that's not ethical, and
> that warrants the generalization of "we".

I'm sure 99.9% of people surveyed will say lots of things are
unethical. Yet, when the opportunity arises, that number drops. Or
rather, they claim an exception. 

Torture, any one?

After all, are clones really people? 

>> > assume otherwise invalidates the point of the movie: If it's perfectly
>> > acceptable to do that, the movie becomes pointless and devoid of
> conflict
>> > for the audience.
>
>> So, there's little that goes on that is "unacceptable" in our world?
>
> No. But I'm pretty certain that, say, MS does not kill off its programmers
> who are past their prime productivity to avoid costs. In fact, give me one

1. MS not doing so is fairly irrelevant.

2. Killing the clones may in fact be quite humane, given that they're in
poor health at that point. 

> example of a company that actually did that at any point. If it's not

Lots of enterprises in history have cut off people when they're no
longer useful. Perhaps you should read up on Spanish history.

>> > If anything, the clones would function better if "HAL"
>> > stuck to the official company line. Also, it can be argued that even an
>
>> I take it you're an expert on clones?
>
> At least as much as the makers of that movie.

Let's see. You're positing a theory on what's good for clones. They are
not. Your theory is inconsistent with how the clones behave. Who shall I
ignore?

>> > Asimovian robot would lie in that situation to maximize the happiness of
> the
>> > poor soul before his inevitable death.
>
>> I don't recall: Did they say anywhere in the movie that it has to follow
>> the three laws of robotics?
>
> You were the one who suggested clones might function better with such caring
> robots.

Yes. I fail to see what's so Asimovian about my statement.

>> > Huh?
>
>> Your assumption that they were trying to rip off much from other
>> movies.
>
> It's an observation, and a very trivial one. I know you like being contrary,
> but surely even you are not going to argue that the robot (among many other
> things) is not a direct rip off from 2001? And I am sure opening the scene
> with an astronaut on a threadmill was also a coincidence.... etc

Frankly, I'm beginning to doubt that you've read much SF.

>> Yes, and it takes a wise person to know when not to analyze if there
>> isn't sufficient information.
>
> It's a movie. It's self contained. And it's sufficient information. If I'm

Movies are self contained? 

I'm beginning to understand why we're not seeing eye to eye. You view a
movie as a fundamentally different concept than I. The same is also true
for your views on SF, and perhaps stories in general.

>> > I am not under obligation to *imagine* that he has additional, more
>> > important jobs. If the moviemakers wanted me to believe that, they would
>> > have to have *shown* me. Since they did not, it's their failing either
> way,
>
>> If the moviemakers had deemed your knowing that as relevant, yes.
>
> Exactly. We can conclude that the director though out guy doesn't do
> anything else relevant. We see him sleeping, working out (several times),
> building models (several scenes), banging an alarm clock (couple of
> different times)... etc. Obviously, it's not as if the director ran out of
> celluloid before he could show us the really "important" jobs he does on the
> base. We thus conclude that he has shown all that is relevant, and he
> doesn't really do anything more demanding than carrying canisters back and
> forth.

Well, not relevant to the *story*. If I made a movie about a company
that mistreats its workers, you're suggesting it's my duty to point out
the details of what the workers actually /do/? 

And I just can't see Earth-like gravity and faster than light
communication as being relevant to the plot of the story. Along with a
lot of your other complaints. Sure, with some of them, one /could/ have
come up with an interesting story, but it would likely be a different
one.

You know, it's OK to simply say you didn't like it. You don't have to
construct a whole theory of story-telling and SF to defend it.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> writes:

>> "A clockwork orange" is one of the most powerful and influential SF
>> movie ever, except that there's 0 science in it. 
>
> I've never heard that called science fiction.  Is 1984 also considered
> to be science fiction?

Yes and yes. Although I hear it less frequently for the latter. The
former's case is not that rare.

Post a reply to this message

Neeum Zawan wrote:
> Yes and yes. Although I hear it less frequently for the latter. The
> former's case is not that rare.

I guess I just object to taking a movie like ZombieLand or something, and 
turning it into a fantasy by having the character say "Nobody is sure where 
zombies came from, maybe a wizard in China." Or turning it into science 
fiction by having him say "Nobody is sure where zombies came from, maybe an 
escaped science lab."  Yet having them otherwise be exactly the same movie.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> writes:

> Neeum Zawan wrote:
>> Yes and yes. Although I hear it less frequently for the latter. The
>> former's case is not that rare.
>
> I guess I just object to taking a movie like ZombieLand or something,
> and turning it into a fantasy by having the character say "Nobody is
> sure where zombies came from, maybe a wizard in China." Or turning it
> into science fiction by having him say "Nobody is sure where zombies
> came from, maybe an escaped science lab."  Yet having them otherwise be
> exactly the same movie.

I'm often not too happy at a lot of things labeled SF. But I have to be
honest with myself and say that I like a number of stories that are
considered SF, that I consider to have an SF "feel" about them, but yet
have little to do with science (you know, lots of space stories,
including a lot of Asimov's stuff). 

Although I'm not sure why you'd object to 1984 as SF. It wasn't the
point of the book, but science/technology played a key role.

Post a reply to this message