Watch Sense8 (series)

"Eight strangers around the globe find themselves connected -- first by a violent vision, then by their shared ability to connect with one another's thoughts and actions, and finally by the urgent need to find out what happened and why. Their need to know goes beyond simple curiosity -- as they pursue answers, a mysterious organization hunts them down, intent on destroying them. The intense thriller is the first foray into television (or, more accurately, Netflix) for renowned filmmakers Lana Wachowski and Andy Wachowski ("The Matrix Reloaded"), who created the series with J. Michael Straczynski ("Thor"). The international cast includes veteran actors known to U.S. audiences, like Daryl Hannah ("Kill Bill") and Naveen Andrews ("Lost"), and others well-known in their home countries, like German actor Max Riemelt and Doona Bae of South Korea. In keeping with the global premise of the series, shooting takes place all over the world, including London, Reykjavik, Nairobi and Mumbai."
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2. @ Wikipedia
3. Trailer

Soylent Green

"Soylent Green is a 1973 American science fiction film directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Charlton Heston and, in his final film, Edward G. Robinson. The film overlays the police procedural and science fiction genres as it depicts the investigation into the murder of a wealthy businessman in a dystopian future suffering from pollution, overpopulation, depleted resources, poverty, dying oceans, and a hot climate due to the greenhouse effect. Much of the population survives on processed food rations, including "soylent green".

The film, which is loosely based upon the 1966 science fiction novel Make Room! Make Room!, by Harry Harrison, won the Nebula Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film in 1973.

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1. Would you eat Soylent Green?

HP Lovecraft

"Howard Phillips "H. P." Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author who achieved posthumous fame through his influential works of horror fiction. Virtually unknown and only published in pulp magazines before he died in poverty, he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors in his genre.

Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his life. His father was confined to a mental institution when Lovecraft was 3 years old. His grandfather, a wealthy businessman, enjoyed storytelling and was an early influence. Intellectually precocious but sensitive, Lovecraft had begun composing rudimentary horror tales and had begun to be overwhelmed by feelings of anxiety by the age of 8. He encountered problems with peers in school, and was kept at home by his highly-strung and overbearing mother for illnesses that may have been psychosomatic. In high school Lovecraft found his contemporaries were accepting and he formed friendships. He also involved neighborhood children in elaborate make-believe projects, only regretfully ceasing the activity at 17 years old. Despite leaving school in 1908 without graduating—he found mathematics particularly difficult—Lovecraft's knowledge of subjects that interested him was formidable.

Although he seems to have had some social life, attending meetings of a club for local young men, Lovecraft in early adulthood was established in a reclusive 'nightbird' lifestyle without occupation or pursuit of romantic adventures. In 1913 his conduct of a long running controversy in the letters page of a story magazine led to his being invited to participate in an amateur journalism association. Encouraged, he started circulating his stories; he was 31 at the time of his first publication in a professional magazine. Lovecraft contracted a marriage to an older woman he had met at an association conference. By age 34, he was a regular contributor to newly founded Weird Tales magazine; he turned down an offer of the editorship.

Lovecraft returned to Providence in 1926, and over the next nine months he produced some of his most celebrated tales including "The Call of Cthulhu", canonical to the Cthulhu Mythos. Never able to support himself from earnings as author and editor, commercial success increasingly eluded him in this latter period, partly because he lacked the confidence and drive to promote himself. Lovecraft subsisted in progressively straitened circumstances in his last years; an inheritance was completely spent by the time he died at the age of 46."

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HP Lovecraft Archieve

Collection of his stories

Cthulhu Lives

Brave New World: by Aldous Huxley:

"Published in 1932 by Aldous Huxley, Brave New World portrays a futuristic society in which the individual is sacrificed for the state, science is used to control and subjugate, and all forms of art and history are outlawed. In short, the book fits into the classic mold of “dystopian” literature. (“Dystopia” is the opposite of utopia. In a dystopian society, everything is bad, and it’s generally the fault of government.)

While the novel has certainly been a success, it has also been criticized from many quarters. As a work of ideas and philosophy, it’s fascinating. As a work of imaginative fiction trying to be a novel…it actually fails, at least according to the tough critics. You’ll find that parts of the novel veer off into philosophical treatise land (Chapters Sixteen and Seventeen, in particular), the plot has some holes, and the characters have some major inconsistencies.

But if you step outside of the realm of the stuffiest of literary critics, you can appreciate the impact that Brave New World has made on 20th century literature with its dire warnings about the future. The novel is frequently compared to a much later novel, Orwell’s 1984, because the novels treat the same subject matter but in different light. In 1958, Huxley published an essay called Brave New World Revisited, in which he basically says, “I was right” and predicts that his horrifying vision of the future will come to fruition sooner rather than later.


Why Should I Care?

In Brave New World’s new world, there is no God. There’s no religion, no Ten Commandments, no spiritual pilgrimages. Why? Because “God is incompatible with machines,” we’re told. Eliminate suffering, and you don’t need God to give you comfort.

OK, now let’s back up 532 years to roughly…today. Or maybe, by the time you’re reading this, yesterday. If you’ve turned on your TV in the last few years, you’ve probably heard something on the news about evolution, creationism, and intelligent design. As we learn more and more through science and can do more through technology, the question is this: Will the need for God disappear once we don’t need a higher being to give us answers or comfort?

Comfort, answers… either way, the topic here is one of unease. In Brave New World, physical ease means God isn’t needed. In today’s world, the question can be expanded to ask whether mental ease means God isn’t needed.

We spent some time looking into what the world has to say about this intelligent design/creationism/evolution debate. As it turns out, the big debate isn’t so much about which is true – it’s about which theory we should teach in schools.

Wait a minute…we’re having this HUGE, raging argument about God, and it’s not even really about God? It’s about education?

And now we’d like to turn your attention, once again, to Brave New World. Huxley’s novel isn’t just a warning about science – it’s a warning about education. The citizens of his future-world-gone-wrong are indoctrinated with irrational lessons in morality and behavior from day one. Teach them the same mindless platitudes over and over, and before you know it, this indoctrination is a part of who they are. (Actually, according to Huxley, it drips onto them like wax and forms a big, blobby mess where a person used to be.)

Huxley’s “hypnopaedia” (a.k.a. brainwashing) makes it clear that with education comes a HUGE responsibility. You Shmoopsters out there might be learning, you might be teaching, but no matter who you are, you’re in a position to question, debate, and decide what will be taught. We all are. So let’s not mess it up."

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A Canticle for Leibowitz

Considered to be one of the best post-apocalyptic novels, I am posting about this book so that  many more people can be aware of its existence and maybe read it!

"Down the long centuries after the Flame Deluge scoured the earth clean, the monks of the Order of St. Leibowitz the Engineer kept alive the ancient knowledge. In their monastery in the Utah desert, they preserved the precious relics of their founder: the blessed blueprint, the sacred shopping list and the holy shrine of Fallout Shelter.

Watched over by an immortal wanderer, they witnessed humanity's rebirth from ashes, and saw reenacted the eternal drama of the struggle between light and darkness, life and death"

Credit: Good Reads
 

Clifford D Simak

"Clifford Donald Simak (* August 3, 1904 in Milville, Wisconsin, USA / † April 25, 1988 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA) was a journalist and a science fiction writer. Simak was considered as one of the “Grandmasters” of science fiction and he was honoured several times with awards for his contribution to science fiction literature.

Clifford D. Simak wrote continuously science fiction and fantasy for over 55 years (only few other writers worked as long as he did). He never was such a prolific writer like Isak Asimov or Robert Silverberg. Anyhow he managed to publish in these 55 years 28 novels and more than 120 short stories in the genres science fiction and fantasy – and that avocational until his retirement in 1976. He earned his living as a reporter and editor of big newspapers in the American middle west.

There was a time when Simak was considered as one of the most valued SF-writers and there was hardly any standard literature on the history of science fiction which has not dedicate him a separate paragraph or even an own chapter even though he was never in fashion. He stood mostly in the shadow of his more famous colleagues.


Clifford D. Simak developed over these years his own style which made his work distinctive. This style consists of a skilled combination of typical SF-elements (time machines, inter dimensional doors, Psi-abilities) with ordinary people and locations of the present, especially middle american small towns like for example Milville in Wisconsin, where Simak was born and grew up.

His short stories and novels tell mostly about “ordinary people”, farmers or small town habitants who unexpected get into situations which are unclear at the beginning. Often this people open a door, a door to other dimensions or times. Simaks humanity and his subtle humour are typical characteristics of his novels and stories.

Despite there are space ships, robots and other genre typical devices of science fiction, he was never much interested how these technical devices are working. For him they were just instruments for the purpose to tell (mostly) good stories.
Brian W. Aldiss wrote in his foreword to the anthology “Galactic Empires” very appropriate about Clifford D. Simak:

"There was a time when Simak was everyone's favourite author. A Simak story was unmistakable. When everyone else appeared to be describing big tough heroes going out and giving alien races what-for, Simak would tell you about this little old Earth man sitting on his verandah, whittling a stick when up comes this green guy. The green guy has a funny big machine come down out of the skies. The two of them get to talking, and the little old Earth man takes a can of oil and fixes the green man's funny big machine, and in exchange this green guy makes the little old Earth man's crops grow a durn sight better'n his neighbour's ever do."
(Quoted from: Ewald, Robert J.: When the Fires Burn High and the Wind is from the North, p.51-52)

Today, just 25 years after his death, Clifford D. Simak is nearly forgotten. This web site shall contribute in keeping the memory of Clifford D. Simak alive."


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People To Know : Philip K. Dick

Wiki Article

Wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , The Man in the High Castle , and other works.
Books made into movies such as A Scanner Darkly (with Winona Ryder <3), Total Recall, and Minority Report.


From Gutenburg :)

• Beyond Lies the Wub (English) (as Author)
• Beyond the Door (English) (as Author)
• The Crystal Crypt (English) (as Author)
• The Defenders (English) (as Author)
• The Eyes Have It (English) (as Author)
• The Gun (English) (as Author)
• Mr. Spaceship (English) (as Author)
• Piper in the Woods (English) (as Author)
• Second Variety (English) (as Author)
• The Skull (English) (as Author)
• The Variable Man (English) (as Author)