SF movies tend to have an extremely generic Midjourney look these days that wasn’t the case in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I think that’s because over the last decade or so we’ve lost most of the great designers — Moebius, Cobb, Mead. There’s no longer any real sense of a personality to the way this stuff looks. And that’s…

As an SF reader, I’d say the Villeneuve adaptation is much better. It’s generally faithful to Herbert’s themes and vision, and was made by someone who actually understands science fiction as a literary genre, as demonstrated by Arrival, which was a solid, unflinching adaptation of the Ted Chiang novella “Story of Your…

Even better than the movie where he is “lowered like a drawbridge, fully clothed, onto a naked woman”?

From what I understand, Tolkien rarely watched any movies or television, and didn’t own a TV. There’s a famous anecdote about him spending an evening with Robert Graves and an attractive young woman whom he got along well with but didn’t recognize. The woman was Ava Gardner.

I do think technology does play a role. The LotR movies, especially Fellowship, really sell the viewer on the idea of Middle Earth as a place, especially where you have all these extended shots where the camera (virtual or otherwise) pulls back to reveal the characters dwarfed by a massive landscape or structure. And…

From what I understand, the tech is fast approaching the top of the S curve and from here on out it’s going to seem less amazing and more glitchy and deranged. But don’t tell that to VC bros and shareholders in search of the next shiny bouncing object after the blockchain, crypto, NFTs, the “metaverse,” etc.

My feeling is that most of the use cases for AI in its current form are going to end up being very mundane things, similar to spellcheck, that don’t end up having any real stigma. The hype surrounding the technology is probably unsustainable.

It’s hard to say, because people have been growing up with fantasy, scifi and superheroes since the 30s at least. There was basically a generation raised by comic books.

See, I see Google as more like Gibson’s zaibatsus. It started out with a sort of corporate identity and ethos, but it’s carcinised to become a pretty standard corporation, regardless of the founders’ intentions. The defining quality of the TA’s I read in the book is quixotic failure; they’re egomaniacs who tried to…

Weirdly enough I don’t remember a whole lot of sex in Gibson’s stuff either, except for the bit in Difference Engine, and that was supposed to be a parody of Victorian era porn. Seems like that was probably one of Sterling’s passages.

Having never read Stations, I have to ask...

The bit in Idoru with the Bono-type singer marrying the Japanese AI seems rather prescient. It wouldn’t surprise me if some Silicon Valley guy announced a similar sort of union in the near future, probably Elon. A lot of generative AI seems to be bent on creating the sort of ideal, “traditionalist” woman who doesn’t…

The key is making it look as little like other cyberpunk movies and games as possible. 

It will be tough to not succumb to the “John Carter Effect” - where it will seem derivative despite being the originator of so many tropes of the genre.

In the late ‘70s Brian De Palma was developing a movie of The Demolished Man. I imagine that would’ve been visually astonishing, with lots of split screen to simulate the telepathy. Maybe someone can get him to come out of retirement to make that.

I think it must be weird to meet with an agent and have him be like, “You look like a handsome asshole, so we’re going to put you up for a lot of handsome asshole roles.” Then you go to an audition for The Dark Knight Rises, and get cast because you have a look that immediately screams Upper Crust Douchebag I Want…

Man, the fact that comments like yours are coming out of the woodwork is reminding me why I grew to love coming to this site. I expected that I might get a bunch of naysayers, but instead I’ve gotten pretty much unanimously thoughtful responses and I couldn’t be more proud.

Hey, luckily for you, I do like to go through the greys and check comments! Especially for thoughtful comments like yours.

I will forever die on the hill that this movie is not nearly as satirical as people think it is.

Long movie is long. It was good though. The different animation styles were great but some times I was questioning the use as they shifted. There were times when I was wondering if I was watching a 3d version as there was some of the out of focus stuff that you see when you take off your glasses in a 3d movie. I guess…