Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Stalker; some reference works

Stalker and other Tarkovsky films online.

About Geoff Dyer's Zona, a book about Stalker.

Shorter Dyer: "it is the reason cinema was invented."

Russian critics remember how the film was made: in Russia, Tajikstan, and Estonia.

Cinema, a visual medium, turns space into time.

A sort of real-life Zone.

John 20 (see especially John 20:29). Revelation 6.

Walking on water. A Russian-style crown of thorns.

Another sacred place.

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This belongs somewhere: a lot of review-essays about SF since the 1990s (not academic-scholarly, but critical and serious).

So does a a reminder about the all-purpose SF news site io9.

And so does the new online edition of the SF Encyclopedia, edited by John Clute.

Here are all its entries on film.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Kim Stanley Robinson, "hard sf" and Mars

Something hard.

Something big, old and hard.

Mars seen from Mars.

The real Mars Society and its real prep for people on Mars.

The NASA/ Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars site. NASA/ JPL pictures from Mars.

Sand and rocks on Mars, thanks to Curiosity Rover.

The first hard sf movie. "Golden Age" sf as an influence on NASA, according to Howard McCurdy.

Larry Niven's Ringworld. io9's guide to Ringworld.

Niven and other hard sf writers from the 1970s as an influence on this guy, who thought this could work.

But hard sf now gives us ways to think about this problem, and thus about this problem, and this problem, directly or by thinking about this place.

Not a completely alien scene.

Not a completely unrecognizable image.

But this thing requires explanation.

Another map of Mars.

Real tweets from Mars. And sarcastic tweets from Mars.

A Mars trilogy glossary, with areological, astronomical, and political terms.

Polyvinylidene difluoride: it's real.

Also real: Martian alases. Here's one in northern Russia.

Deep ecology in one diagram.

Alexander (not Arkady) Bogdanov plays chess with Lenin. Bogdanov's novel: Bolsheviks on Mars.

The first hundred, by name where known (part of a Mars trilogy reference site; links contain spoilers).

Kim Stanley Robinson's almost crushingly informative official site.

Some people think we can really build space elevators.

Not so sure atp abt moholes.

More ice on Mars.

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