Post Apocalyptic Media List At Quiet Earth

From 12 Monkeys to Z for Zachariah.

Breaking Asimov’s 1st Law of Robotics

Researchers in Slovenia are shattering Asimov’s 1st Law of Robotics, in order, they say, to make robots that obey it better. Participants engage in an arm-punching contest with a borrowed industrial ‘bot, but the humans don’t get to hit back. They just have to stand there and take it, for science, Slovenia-style. We figure that in more litigious juristictions, this study would lead to Asimov’s 1st Law Suit of Robotics.

h/t Paul Raven

DVD Review: Children of Men

Children of Men

The world mourns. Its youngest inhabitant has died. That’s the set-up in the opening of Children of Men, a dystopian reverse-quest picture from 2006, directed by Alfonso Cuarón and starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and Michael Caine in an extremely odd turn as a superannuated hippie, long gray locks and all. What’s the big deal about the youngest person in the world?  Well “Baby” Diego was a celebrity because he didn’t die the day he was born but 18 years later. He’s not the last person on Earth, just the last person delivered to it. No one has reproduced in 18 years and the entire world — except, for some reason, the United Kingdom — has collapsed because of it.

The UK has managed to hang on to some sliver of civilization — people still make up lame excuses, like Theo (Owen) our hero, to slack off work and the shops still sell nice paper cups of take-out coffee — but the country is in the midst of a fascistic backlash against a tsunami of immigrants who have made their way there.

Owen’s Theo is the ideal of the reluctant hero, so ideal that you can’t be sure he’s reluctant about the actual mission or just pathologically reluctant. Those whose criteria requires a character “arc”  may well be disappointed. So-called “arc” is not an absolute requirement hereabouts –  more a nice-to-have-when-called-for. A contrived, poorly acted arc can be worse than well-written character who stays well-written and well-acted the entire story.  And so Owen’s one- or two-note performance is perfectly toned for this one and he is solidly within his range. He has the face for it. That anyone can keep a shred of sanity in this future hell would seem to require a severely modulated outlook. Too up or too down and you’d have lost your grip years before.

The quest is a reversed one because Theo is not pursuing a treasure, but working to deliver one to safety. He’s to escort Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) the first woman to turn up pregnant in 18 years, to a rumored and semi-legendary sanctuary. He’s enlisted/coerced by a band of pro-immigrant terrorists  (he’s almost killed by one of their bombs) led by Julian (Moore) who just happens to be his ex-wife.

The garbled motivations of the terror group and the mechanics of the plot are where the film doesn’t quite deliver. The idea that the plight of illegal immigrants would be the overarching concern of 1970s-style radicals and their holistic hangers-on at a time when the world is plunged into profound anarchy is less plausible than the unexplained global infertility.  A secondary faction comes into play and their motivation is even more opaque.

Much of the lack of clarity can be attributed to the mumble-your-lines naturalism of modern acting, combined with, to the American ear, the rapid-fire UK English patois. About a quarter of the dialogue was unintelligible. You get the gist, though, and the visually gripping world –  post-apocalyptically speaking — the action and the fast pace left no desire to rewind or turn on the subtitles just to hear what the heck that guy actually said.

The dreaded shaky cam also rears its tiresome head during action scenes, of course, along with the requisite, blood-on-the-camera-lens. That and the mumbled lines and this is an unfortunately not uncommon case of the storytelling sacrificed on the altar of cinema realism. It’s a movie for cryin’ out loud. Would anyone miss it if the camera didn’t shake?

In any case there are also minor plot holes on the order of  “How did he know she was there?” and “How did they track him down?” but these are mere quibbles in a film with a supremely primal emotional hook — the survival of the entire species — in a grimly imagined and photographed world. It hits a few more targets than it misses.

Loose Notes: There are stunts and there are stunts. Nothing spectacular here but one chase scene, unless it was done with CGI, has two guys getting knocked off their motorbikes, and it’s hard to see how they were not crippled or killed.

Michael Caine as Theo’s aged hippie mentor Jasper is a bit on the jolly side, but Caine is Caine and always improves any movie lucky enough to have him.

InfinityBound: focus shift, back to the sci-fi

Not such a glacial shift, really, but for a few reasons: one big one that will become apparent soon, and two because of a recent high tech failure. Our front line graphics-chewing PC died. We’ll work to revive it, or something, soon.  Gaming topics and reviews will have to be set aside for the duration. Science fiction will be the focus for the nonce, though it has never really left InfinityBound. Near-future, HARD sci-fi story-telling in all media is our main thing. We are ride the boundary between speculative life–it’s not just about the technology, you know–and the real world…as we now know it. Of course we are not limiting to that by any stretch, all sci-fi is fair game and we’ll even stretch into paranormal. But we promise, no teen vampires.

Like this :  Artificial Intelligence: helping man to explore the cosmos

Sounds like a story in there somewhere.

And we’ve recently been brushing up on our dystopia recently as well (again, for reasons  etc etc ….stay tuned)

The other night we screened Children of Men, which was better than not,  and we’ll give it a mini- review next. Film reviews are much less time-consuming than game reviews, so hopefully it will mean more posts . Two hours letting the subject  wash over  you and then write. Game reviews, well the way we like to do them anyway, can take over your life for weeks. Soon as we get our A-game technology back in gear we’ll do more.

But for now, back to science fiction.

SlashDot Civilization 5 Review

We’ll do our own. Won’t be for a while though. Exciting new sci-fi related writing project to announce soon.

Meanwhile…

Review Civilization V

“…Sid Meier and the Firaxis crew realized that they had a solid foundation, and poured their efforts into refining everything that worked, and revamping everything that didn’t. Civilization V reflects not just a few years of direct development after the launch of Civ 4, but also nearly two decades of continually evolving game design.”

Dreamlords Resurrection: Paradox Interactive’s first FTP online title

Paradox Interactive announces its first Free-to-Play (FtP) title, Dreamlords of Resurrection, a fantasy theme that will, hints the release, include long term strategic planning. (Press release: Paradox Interactive unveils Dreamlords Resurrection – Paradox Interactive.)  This and future FtP titles will be released under the Paradox Connect brand. Dreamlords is an MMORTS game (Massively Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy) that has been around for a few years independently.

400-turn Civilization 5 action report

A report of some pre-release play of the new Civilization V. In sum: graphics improved, of course. And a new city growth system exploits the new map hexes nicely, which is good to hear.  Elimination of unit stacks brings the games into the realm of strategic, army-level war games. Long overdue. As the reviewer mentions, encirclement becomes a viable ground strategic goal, instead of the wars of attrition, with single-square stacks of units hammering each other until one or the other is eliminated. Additionally units now have hit points, which will make combat a bit more interesting than the winner-take-all affairs they’ve been up to now. Also discussed are city states, a totally new concept, and a revamped social policy aspect. No mention of the supposed ranged combat feature. Perhaps it was dropped. Archers firing at targets two or three hexes away at this scale would squander all the benefits of what sounds like an improved strategic combat system. Come September! Yes. We have come around.

UPDATE: Article author Stephen Totillo in an e-mail reports that ranged combat is still present, but that it works well. Not a deal breaker. We’ll see.

The Beekeeper – Short Story

Posted on ScriptD:

The Beekeeper is satisfied to tend his hives and live his life after getting bounced by his rival at a high tech mega-corporation until he’s called upon to go back up into Earth orbit. A mysterious unaccounted-for supply pod is returning to intersect the orbit of the new space casino. The Beekeeper is the only one, on the planet or off, who can deal with it.

Wall Street Journal notices wargames

A nice little capsule review of the history of wargames by the Wall Street Journal, Boys, Men and the War-Strategy Game.

Yes the hobby does fill a need but then I heard an ad on the radio today promoting a math-only tutoring franchise. So the schools have a gap there too. Just what is it the public school actually do?

Anyway, my interest started when a high school history teacher used Diplomacy as a class activity so I guess I was lucky.  But toy soldiers and Sgt Rock/Sgt. Fury comics had interests too so I may have been fated to be a grognard.

The article doesn’t dwell too much on any sociological thesis of boys, men, war and wargames (which are often labeled, somewhat prissilly, as “conflict simulations” so as not to offend any nearby peaceniks.)

However playing a wargame doesn’t make you a warmonger. In fact, as any soldier will tell you. Peace is preferred. But if war is the enemy then the first rule of warfare is…know your enemy.

Civ 5 will allow conversion of Civ 4 maps

This new Civilization version 5, due out in the fall,  may be growing on me. I know I mentioned perhaps not even getting it but the self-doubts on that began immediately after writing it in a previous post. I’ll probably end up getting it, since we’ve gotten every version since the original, and Civ 4 with the Warlords and Beyond the Sword add-ons is the best iteration since then.

Not that I have a lot of saved maps  but this conversion feature will please many players, especially modders. The World Builder in 5 will allow conversion of your existing maps.

Still not on board with the ranged attacks. At these scales, archers firing more than one hex away seems to us like being able to shoot arrows from Miami to Havana. But I may be willing to live with that.

Note: I haven’t played Civ 4 in a few weeks, and so no tip posts lately. We have a few things in the works.  More later.