On Sat, 19 Jun 2010 10:53:34 -0600, somebody wrote:

> I don't need to pepper my prose with "I like"s and "I dislike"s and "I
> prefer"s
> and "I think"s to feel secure.

I don't think it's a question of one feeling secure; I think it's a 
question of differentiating between facts and opinions.

YMMV, of course.

Jim

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SharkD wrote:
> On 6/18/2010 7:56 PM, John VanSickle wrote:
>> There are some who distinguish between sci-fi and science fiction.
>>
>> Science fiction is reserved for those tales in which the author both
>> believes that the science in the story is possible, and is also
>> technically competent enough to know what is possible and what is not.
> 
> I thought the distinction was based on literary/artistic merit alone? 
> I.e. not on the quality of the "science".

That's a bit too open to debate (and certainly more open to debate than 
the fidelity of the science) to be much use in making distinctions.

Regards,
John

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Neeum Zawan <fee### [at] festercom> wrote:
> And if you want a really poor movie from an SF perspective, go and watch
> District 9.

  I'm beginning to think that there are *no* good sci-fi movies in existence.

  Every time a sci-fi movie comes out, somebody will complain and point
out how ludicrous some detail about it is, hence making it nothing but a
caricature of "good" sci-fi. I don't think there exists any movie which
would be considered "good" in this regard.

  This makes me wonder what these people are comparing the movies to.
Nothing, I suppose. Some vapid imaginary concept they have about what
a "good" sci-fi movie should be like.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Every time a sci-fi movie comes out, somebody will complain and point
> out how ludicrous some detail about it is, hence making it nothing but a
> caricature of "good" sci-fi. I don't think there exists any movie which
> would be considered "good" in this regard.

Galaxy Quest! :-)

Total Recall?  (Confusions easy to brush off, as that was the point of the 
movie.)

Alien? (I never really heard any defensible complaints about it.)

>   This makes me wonder what these people are comparing the movies to.

Books?

I'm trying to think of a (hard-ish) sci-fi movie that was as good an 
adaption of the book as (say) Harry Potter was.

-- 
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.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Alien? (I never really heard any defensible complaints about it.)

  Don't ask me. I'm not the one claiming certain popular sci-fi movies being
bad...

> >   This makes me wonder what these people are comparing the movies to.

> Books?

> I'm trying to think of a (hard-ish) sci-fi movie that was as good an 
> adaption of the book as (say) Harry Potter was.

  Well, that assumes that the book itself can be considered good sci-fi
in the first place... :P

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 24/06/2010 8:42 PM, Warp wrote:
>    I'm beginning to think that there are*no*  good sci-fi movies in existence.
>






-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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On 24/06/2010 8:46 PM, Darren New wrote:
>
> Alien? (I never really heard any defensible complaints about it.)

How about I fell asleep before it finished?

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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Warp wrote:
>   Well, that assumes that the book itself can be considered good sci-fi
> in the first place... :P

Well, sure. Obviously, there are some books that *are* considered good 
sci-fi, at least by a large number of readers. There are even books that I'd 
consider good sci-fi but which I personally didn't enjoy.

But many of the complaints I hear about "hard" science fiction, like 
complaints about Blade Runner for example, are along the lines of "that 
wasn't the same story as the book."  Not that there was anything 
particularly wrong with the story as told, but only that it didn't meet the 
expectations set by the book.

Of course, some complaints are completely valid. Like "why didn't the 
department of pre-corrections turn off the eyeball access granted to the 
fugitive murderer that used to be allowed in?" in Minority Report. A movie 
which, I'll grant, was nothing at all like the book, and indeed completely 
missed the entire point of the actual book story.

Didn't they make a Farenheit 451 movie? Was that any good? Or an Illustrated 
Man movie?

There are huge numbers of "good" science fiction books that could be made 
into decently good movies nowadays. Even some decent sci-fi I've read that 
you could make suspenseful and all that good stuff without a huge budget.

What I want to know is why virtually every monster movie is zombies, 
vampires, or werewolves? With maybe an occasional killer robot or black 
lagoon creature thrown in.  Can't a horror writer come up with a decent 
original monster?

-- 
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.

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On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:05:39 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 24/06/2010 8:46 PM, Darren New wrote:
>>
>> Alien? (I never really heard any defensible complaints about it.)
> 
> How about I fell asleep before it finished?

I thought the second was better than the first, but I think the first 
could be counted as better Sci Fi.

Falling asleep doesn't mean it's bad Sci Fi, though - I fell asleep 
during Amadeus the first time I watched it, but it was still a good 
film. :-)

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> I thought the second was better than the first, but I think the first 
> could be counted as better Sci Fi.

I don't know why people really thought that. There are few movies where the 
sequel is as good as the original, and I'll grant Aliens held its own. But I 
didn't like it as much as Alien. Perhaps it was just because I was at the 
right age for Alien and too cynical by the time Aliens came out or something.

-- 
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.

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