IGX

Any recent movies that were examples of good sci fi?

BSG is excellent.

Pinky wrote:BSG is excellent.

Is she on a lot?

BucketHead wrote:

Pinky wrote:BSG is excellent.

Is she on a lot?

Yes, and there are many copies of her.

If you haven't seen Impostor yet you should.

greystuff wrote:If you haven't seen Impostor yet you should.

I second that. Good movie.

GoDogGo! wrote:

greystuff wrote:If you haven't seen Impostor yet you should.

I second that. Good movie.

It isn't a recent movie as you can see from IMDB, but I don't think most have seen it. I caught Sunshine recently and was pleasantly surprised.

greystuff wrote:

GoDogGo! wrote:

greystuff wrote:If you haven't seen Impostor yet you should.

I second that. Good movie.

It isn't a recent movie as you can see from IMDB, but I don't think most have seen it. I caught Sunshine recently and was pleasantly surprised.

IIRC it came out at about the same time as "Minority Report" and was overshadowed by it as the smaller of two PK Dick movies, but IMO was actually better.

I have seen shitloads of sci fi films, and read even more sci fi books...it's quite possible I've read more sci fi than anybody here. I don't know what the good, newer movies are wrt to sci fi, though, since lately I've picked up pieces of shit like "Southland Tales".

I'm definitely going to pick up both "Firefly" and the BSG series.

Shaf wrote:I have seen shitloads of sci fi films, and read even more sci fi books...it's quite possible I've read more sci fi than anybody here. I don't know what the good, newer movies are wrt to sci fi, though, since lately I've picked up pieces of shit like "Southland Tales".

I'm definitely going to pick up both "Firefly" and the BSG series.

Both of those tv shows are good, but in very different ways. Firefly is clever and fairly funny, with good characters, and very nice looking broads. Especially that black chick from Cleopatra 2525 with the incredible legs/ass. BSG is just an all around excellent show that also has nice looking broads. Have you seen A Scanner Darkly yet? Pretty decent movie based on a PK Dick novel, with interesting animation. I also agree with Jack about Minority Report and Gamera vs Monster X being good flicks.

I saw Minority Report, haven't seen "Sunshine" yet, or "A Scanner Darkly" either.

I can forgive a lot if it's entertaining.

Shaf wrote:I have seen shitloads of sci fi films, and read even more sci fi books...it's quite possible I've read more sci fi than anybody here. I don't know what the good, newer movies are wrt to sci fi, though, since lately I've picked up pieces of shit like "Southland Tales".

I'm definitely going to pick up both "Firefly" and the BSG series.

"Firefly" rocks. They actually built the whole inside of the ship as one set, which creates a very realistic feel as they follow them around inside. If you haven't seen "Serenity" yet, don't watch it until you get through the FF series, since "Serenity" resolves the FF storyline.
And yes, there is an ASS on that black girl. Wow.

Jack wrote: Minority Report is an excellent film, to say Impostor is better makes no sense, except that Maddie Stowe is a plus in any film.

I thought MR was too big and shiny and suffered from Tom Cruise being Tom Cruise. Sinese is much more accessible.
I did however like the line "With the drugs I'm going to give you, I could sew a dead cat inside your chest and it wouldn't matter."

I can stand by no longer!

- Day the Earth Stood Still..... yes
- Forbidden Planet -yes
- Earth Vs The Flying Saucers -fun, yes
- This Island Earth - yes, somewhat pretentious
- Day of the Triffids............. great book, okay movie w/ disturbing scenes of "blind London"
- Village of the Damned........ -very much yes
- Zardoz ............................wow. Bad. Fun, hilarious bad. A giant flying stone head gives a red-diaper-clad Sean Connery instructions on whom to rape and murder. I am not making this up.
- Logan's Run...................... filmed in a shopping mall! Silly and fun. and Farrah Fawcett plays a blonde idiot!
- Soylent Green- often mocked, but a very chilling dystopian vision.
- Rollerball..........................It suffers from James Caan sleepwalking, but it's good. Heston should have been in it. The remake deepthroats goat cock.
- Planet of the Apes ...........Only the original. Like "Soylent" it's the butt of jokes but those scenes of humans being fox-hunted by apes are fucking terrifying.

- The Killer Shrews - YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME
- Killdozer. A cheesy blast from the past. Alien intelligence possesses a bulldozer. It kills.
- Last Man on Earth Italian-American production with Vincent Price. Grim and depressing.

- The Night Stalker - at that time, the highest-rated TV movie in history. Spun off into a sequel and then a very uneven TV series. Made my wife want to be a journalist.
- The Time Machine (the original)
- Time After Time - often-overlooked fun. Malcom MacDowell plays HG Wells, who is pursuing Jack the Ripper through time... oh, just see it.

I really enjoyed the SciFi channel's remake of Dune. Their Children of Dune was also really good. I like the original Dune too, but the SciFi version was truer to the book.

Fugitive alien and Liquid Sky are a couple more you might want to check out.

The Shield is one of the few shows I'll watch.

Believe it or not, Jack, I've read every one of them, except the Dan Simmons books. For some reason I've never picked those up.

I've read a lot of Attanasio. Probably 90% of what he's got out. Radix is good.

Guess what, Jack, I've read all of that too. When I say I read a lot, we're talking 2-5 books a week, depending on their length. I tend to read for entertainment, and most of it has been Sci Fi, Fantasy, Thriller or Crime type genres.

Here's some:

Charles Sheffield: Good stuff, all of it.

S.M. Stirling's "Emberverse" stuff is great, entertaining and hard nosed.

David Drake's "Fireships" trilogy is good stuff.

I have a hard time making recommendations, because I've read so much. I should post a pic of my library of paperbacks, which is better than most library's sci fi section. And I have 2-3 boxes packed away that I didn't have room for.

I just read Michael Swanick's new one, "The Dragon's of Babel" good stuff, if not Sci Fi, more fantasy. His "Vacuum Flowers" is classic cyberpunk.

I'm also re-reading RE Howard's Conan stuff. A book came out with the Conan stories in the order they were published. Still exceptional.

Really Big Fantasy Novels? I'm reading Steven Erikson's "Reaper's Gale" which is the 7th book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, which is so grotesque and huge, yet, unlike most of the other massive series, very captivating to me. Think "Black Company" but on a much more massive and ambitious scale.

Barry Hughart's "The Bridge of Birds" and his other stories of Number Ten Ox and Master Li are worth tracking down. Beautiful tales of "A China that never was, but should have been."

Jack, ever since I started reading, I've loved to read.

I've read like this since the first grade.

I first read Starship Troopers in the second grade.

Jack wrote:Shaf,

Since you're a mammoth reader, let me recommend the following good books, most of which are considered top books in the field.

John Varley
- Titan
- Wizard
- Demon
- Millennium
- His collection of Short Stories

Dan Simmons
- Song of Kali
- Hyperion
- Fall of Hyperion
- Endymion
- The Rise of Endymion
- The Hollow Man

Dave Wolverton
- On My Way to Paradise

A.A. Attanasio
- Radix

Joe Haldeman
- Forever War
- Forever Peace

R. Heinlein
- Puppet Masters
- Orphans of the Sky

Michael Moorcock
- All of the original Elric books. Elric is Conan with a brain and more.
- All of the Hawkmoon books
- All of the Corum books.
- Any of the Eternal Champion books and stories.
Moorcock changed the way people regard Sword and Sorcery and SF. A true king of SF.

Philip Jose Farmer
- A Feast Unknown
- Image of the Beast
- Blown
- Stone God Awakens

How can you mention Hienlein and not mention 'Stranger in a Strange Land" "Starship Troopers" and " The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"?

Shaf wrote:Guess what, Jack, I've read all of that too. When I say I read a lot, we're talking 2-5 books a week, depending on their length. I tend to read for entertainment, and most of it has been Sci Fi, Fantasy, Thriller or Crime type genres.

Here's some:

Charles Sheffield: Good stuff, all of it.

S.M. Stirling's "Emberverse" stuff is great, entertaining and hard nosed.

David Drake's "Fireships" trilogy is good stuff.

I have a hard time making recommendations, because I've read so much. I should post a pic of my library of paperbacks, which is better than most library's sci fi section. And I have 2-3 boxes packed away that I didn't have room for.

I just read Michael Swanick's new one, "The Dragon's of Babel" good stuff, if not Sci Fi, more fantasy. His "Vacuum Flowers" is classic cyberpunk.

I'm also re-reading RE Howard's Conan stuff. A book came out with the Conan stories in the order they were published. Still exceptional.

Really Big Fantasy Novels? I'm reading Steven Erikson's "Reaper's Gale" which is the 7th book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, which is so grotesque and huge, yet, unlike most of the other massive series, very captivating to me. Think "Black Company" but on a much more massive and ambitious scale.

Barry Hughart's "The Bridge of Birds" and his other stories of Number Ten Ox and Master Li are worth tracking down. Beautiful tales of "A China that never was, but should have been."

The Man-Kazin Wars books can be entertaining, I read a few in the early 90s because my Dad read me " The Ringworld Engineers" when I was 9 and noticed they tied in.
I got done with Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.
I liked it alot and since you are an avid reader, you might enjoy it as well.

Drake's Leary and Mundy series (begins with Lt. Leary Commanding) is entertaining. In spite of a high mortality rate the tone of the stories is pretty positive with an underlying sense of humor. It's an intentional homage to the Aubrey and Maturin novels, of which Drake is a fan. Drake does the same thing O'Brian does in modeling his ship to ship fights on historical engagements. A little extra tailoring to put them in space, of course. They're just the thing if you need an antidote to pretentious "literature"- a fun read, good old-fashioned space opera.

I've read most, if not all, from Niven, including the Man-Kzin Wars.
I read the first few Dark Tower books a long, long time ago, and never got back to them.

David Drake? I don't think I've read the lastest Leary/Mundy stuff. Like I mentioned, Drake's "Fireships" trilogy is loads of fun.