I wrote a
couple months ago for TheFederalist.com about why I think so much sci-fi leans
socialist (and I notice author J. Neil Schulman weighed in in the comments,
if you can see the Disqus thread below the article, to complain that I referred
to a movie based on his work as “low-budget,” but I didn’t mean it as an
insult).
Speaking of “Federalist” things: you can all complain to me
in person about that piece or others if you join me at the NYU Federalist Society
(40 Washginton Square South in Vanderbilt Hall #220) one week from today to see
libertarian (and new-minted Washington Post blogger) Eugene Volokh debate
Richard Aborn on gun control.
But here are 10 more sci-fi(-ish) notes, which is the
important thing:
1. Given how devoted the original RoboCop movies were to
bashing consumerism and capitalism (ironic, given that the two sequels were
written by comics’ Frank Miller, who later did a post-9/11 political 180 and
turned into a sort of Ayn Rand-influenced conservative), I was pleased the new
version (A) was instead mostly about bashing police and military corruption and
(B) was far more psychologically nuanced (and relevant-seeming, given the
reality of current drone and A.I. research) than the original. Overall,
arguably a better movie -- but it lacks the original’s trashy, postmodern
humor, so it isn’t ultimately as lovable or iconic.
2. This is going to be one very, very popular Dungeons
& Dragons audio book, read by Ice-T.
3. Despite the fact that I somehow have a communist friend
who thinks Orwell was warning us about conservatives, Orwell wrote this letter (h/t Judith Weiss) that was pretty explicit about his fears for
post-WWII socialist totalitarianism and political correctness (even though
he remained a socialist/anarchist).
4. The indie film From
the Future with Love (h/t Andrew Stover) mocks privatized police, but life’s
too short for political self-abuse, so instead of watching it in its entirety,
I will ask the contrary question: Gee, can you imagine if we instead lived in a
nightmare world where government cops did
a bad job?
Admittedly, though, some see a low-consequence failure
of private policing in a popular interactive online sci-fi game (h/t Jacob
Levy). Well, I say low-consequence, but
it’s apparently sparked the largest space battle of all time.
5. Family-related law is weirder than sci-fi. Take this bizarre case (h/t Tom Palmer) of a
woman who learned
her children are technically her twin’s biological children and almost had
them taken away as a result. Or this
reminder, in the form of a
nine-year-old suddenly taken from the only parents she’s ever known and given
to a just-released ex-convict in another state, that the government is
utterly devoid of compassion, despite what its willing thralls, the
intelligentsia, tell you (h/t Justin Stoddard and Stephan Kinsella). And then there
are the fetuses to worry about (h/t Luca Gattoni-Celli). And let’s not even get started on the whole back-and-forth
Woody Allen thing.
6. Given DC Comics’ recurring attempts in recent years to
make the sentient surveillance system Brother Eye and his OMAC robots important
villains -- and rumors of the evil android Metallo in the Batman vs. Superman
movie -- I think it’s safe to say there’s a method to the seeming madness of
casting a guy who played Mark Zuckerberg in the role of Lex Luthor and to the
rumored depiction of Bruce Wayne (as played by Ben Affleck) as a UN-affiliated
recluse who now fights crime with drones from his Batcave (though I sympathize
with those who wanted Bryan Cranston to be Luthor, such as Franklin Harris, who
declared: we wanted HEISENBERG, not Zuckerberg!).
The whole thing is starting to make as much techno-relevant sense
to me as, well, RoboCop...or Rand
Paul campaigning against Hillary and drones in 2016...or Paul Bettany playing the
Vision instead of just the voice of JARVIS in next year’s Avengers sequel.
7. Meanwhile, speaking of spooky recluses, Alan Moore will do
the voice of an A.I. in the new Robert Anton Wilson-based play Cosmic Trigger (a sequel of sorts to the
play Illuminatus! which led to the
formation of the band KLF, of whom I blogged earlier).
8. It may not be A.I., but they’ll apparently do some
CGI-or-something to depict the last onscreen bit of Plutarch Heavensbee in next
year’s fourth-and-final Hunger Games movie, since they were still filming the
two-part Mockingjay (though with only
seven days of shooting left) when Philip Seymour Hoffman passed away.
9. Most people were watching the Super Bowl that day, but I
don’t follow sports and will do so only when they work like this
(and yes, the music is essential).
10. I’d be more tempted to see how the final two stupid
teams fare on this Friday’s bound-to-disappoint 10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty -- but really, shouldn’t imaginary
lifeforms be at least as weird as, say, jellyfish, instead of the tepid near-humanoid stuff
we get from folklore and Star Trek: The
Next Generation? In a way, this
Onion piece is better sci-fi than most actual sci-fi is.
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