I've become equally fascinated by the moment when the deja vu feeling *fades*. There you are in the middle of the experience, feeling acutely as though everything that's happening around you has happened before, and then suddenly, without the environment changing in any significant way, the sensation vanishes.

The landing plan for the Mars rover after this one will involve the simultaneous deployment of a catapult, space elevator, pogo stick, and atom bomb.

Also Samuel R. Delany, who traveled in Greece — with short additional stints in Turkey and England — in his early 20s. Those experiences clearly left their imprint on his early novels, "The Einstein Intersection" and "Nova."

Anyone who trots out the "nothing was happening in SF in the '70s, and then came cyberpunk" line, like Bacigalupi does in his article, is obviously unaware of (among several other things) this classic rebuttal, made over 25 years ago in response to Bruce Sterling when he first made the claim:

That was perhaps the most generic post ever.

Yes, "from" would be proper usage.

Ah, but one person who knows Newsom did respond, and others who are interested can just do a Google search or find YouTube clips. Yay Internet!

My thought exactly. This exhibit provides the whole visual lexicon for Soviet dieselpunk. Fascinating stuff.

Fiona Apple's sort of alarmingly talented. Video really captures her intensity. In the song itself I thought I heard little hints of Joanna Newsom and Meredith Monk; this is all good.

First, you go read all the other comments here that list the innumerable stupidities of this film. Then get back to us.

Now that was one hell of an enjoyable read. Your alternative-universe version of the film is simultaneously scientifically, thematically, and dramatically tighter than what we got. (I think quite a few of us writing comments here — I include myself in that number — need to get off our asses and start producing, for…

Well, you've been "involved" enough to engage in this debate for quite a few posts now yourself. I'd say you're trying too hard to love this film and make excuses for its inexcusably sloppy structure.

Well! Aren't you the model of politeness.

Absolutely agree. And what makes everyone's unresponsiveness to everyone else doubly strange is that it was so visible. The Captain and the bridge crew basically sit on their hands on the bridge until occasionally called on to emerge and take action, but have no arc, no game plan of their own (until at the end,…

Great article. Basically it's a post-apocalyptic scenario — how the structures left over from the wreckage of the collapse of the Empire were repurposed and occupied by those who came after.

If we take the above scenario seriously, that's actually easy to answer: in all instances, the Xenomorphs we've seen have been "feral", born outside the context of their home civilization. The same is true of the offspring we see here. Newborn human babies behave pretty much the same way when they emerge from the…

Protocol, exactly. Much better term.

Your point about the expedition behaving in an incomprehensibly disorganized manner is crucial, and it bugged me more and more as the film went on. There's no rhyme or reason, no *procedure* to the way the crew does anything. No one is behaving like a credible scientist or officer or anything.

Totally agree; very well said.

Visually, you cannot beat the first 30 minutes of this film. And Michael Fassbender — as always — is very, very good.