Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 5)

Welcome to the final installment of Rating “Cyberfilms”! This has been a lot of fun, but it’s also turned out to be much more work that I initially expected. Mostly because the reviews kept getting increasingly longer, I guess I can’t just write a couple of paragraphs on a story. We’re finishing the series today with George R. R. Martin’s Nightflyers and H. P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West: Reanimator. To learn more about the series and to see previous reviews, read parts 1, 2, 3 and 4!

Nightflyers (George R. R. Martin)
1980
Score: A+

Robert Jaffe adopted this story into the movie of the same name. It was directed by Robert Collector and starred Catherine Mary Stewart, Michael Praed and John Standing.

She put an arm around him, stroked him, coaxed him. “The esperon will give you range,” she said. “Feel it, feel yourself grow stronger. Can you feel it? Everything’s getting clear, isn’t it? “Her voice was a reassuring drone. “Remember the danger now, remember, go find it. Look beyond the wall, tell us about it. Tell us about Royd. Was he telling the truth? Tell us. You’re good, we all know that, you can tell us.” The phrases were almost an incantation.

He shrugged off her support and sat upright by himself. “I can feel it,” he said. His eyes were suddenly clearer. “Something – my head hurts – I’m afraid!”

“Don’t be afraid,” the psipsych said. “The esperon won’t make your head hurt, it just makes you better. Nothing to fear.” She stroked his brow. “Tell us what you see.”

The telepath looked at Royd’s [holograph] with terrified little-boy eyes, and his tongue flicked across his lower lip. “He’s -”

Then his skull exploded.

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Religion, Myth and Games

As expected, Bill Maher’s new documentary Religulous is stirring up strong reactions from supporters and opponents of religion alike. I probably won’t watch this movie because it seemingly aims to prove a predetermined point: that religion is ridiculous. A more bipartisan effort might have tried understanding why people subscribe to a religion, and what the religious belief adds to their lives.

But I don’t think that a discussion of the validity of organized religion will lead to a fruitful result, anyway. As game developers, understanding why religion plays such an important part in many people’s life can help us, though! Because religion is myth. And understanding myth can help us to create games that connect with the audience on a deep emotional level.

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Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 4)

Cyberfilms is a collection of 11 sci-fi short stories that were turned into movies at some point. Movies that, with the exception of Total Recall, I have never seen. So I cecided to review each story on their own merrits, and let you know if I could see a movie in each story. Today we have two rather well-known entries: Johnny Mnemonic and Enemy Mine. I didn’t end up liking either one too much, though To read about some stories that I did like, I suggest visiting parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series. Or wait for the weekend, when I will review the final two stories from this book. Anyway, on to this week’s reviews!

Johnny Mnemonic (William Gibson)
1981
Score: D

Johnny Mnemonic was adapted by the author and turned into the film of the same name, directed by Robert Longo, and starring Keanu Reeves, Dina Meyer and Ice-T.

Yep, that’s me giving William Gibson’s story a D. I didn’t understand it. It might be a great tale, but the density of information that Gibson crams into every sentence and description is staggering. And unfortunately, it is done in such a way that my brain can’t follow. Gibson’s writing just doesn’t create any images in my mind, and an entire action scene might be over before I even realized it. Or understand what just happened.

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Page Navigation Improvements

A few weeks ago, I invested some time into making the breadcrumbs on top of every page a useful navigation tool to browse my page. That made matters much better – but when looking at image attachments, the trail was missing a link back to the parent post. Which made it a pain to go back to the actual post, and made it impossible for Google image searchers to refer to the post at all. Not anymore, though! I coded up something that includes the parent post in the breadcrumb trail:

Of course you’ll need to be in an image gallery to see this small, but important change (at least to me ). I don’t have any good new images to upload right now, so I copied over a cool post from the last webpage instead: “It’s Alive!”, the animatronics exhibition that Victoria and I visited a couple of years ago. Head over and see what Gizmo, Harry (without the Hendersons) and the American Werewolf in London look like without makeup on!

Campaign Essentials

With the 2008 election season in full swing, I will once again quote from Depeche Mode’s song “New Dress”. The following doesn’t go out to either election campaign. It goes out to America – keep it in mind as you watch the debates, and when you cast to vote in November:

You can’t change the world
But you can change the facts
And when you change the facts
You change points of view
If you change points of view
You may change a vote
And when you change a vote
You may change the world

What Can Squirrels Teach Us About Life?

I found this dead squirrel laying on the side of the trail today. She hadn’t been there when I passed by 20 minutes earlier, and the body was still warm. No major injuries, just a bloody nose (and a broken neck/cracked skull, I’m sure). She must just have fallen to an untimely death.

So what’s the morale of the story? No matter how proficient you are at something, and no matter how much you’re in your element – a potentially fatal slip is always just moments away! So keep checking yourself, and don’t get too confident!

I wonder what the mortality rate from falling to death is for the common gray squirrel…