Based on the first half of the novel “Dune” by Frank Herbert, this film follows the hero Paul Atreides, from his coming to the planet Arrakis with his family, until the attack by their enemies which leaves Paul’s father dead and Paul and his mother as fugitives with the desert-dwelling Fremen. Arrakis is the only…
We have a mysterious cave. We have a university professor who goes missing while exploring. We have some university students (plus two high-schoolers) who try to find him. And we have time moving at a different rate inside the cave. It’s not a great film, by any stretch. Directing and acting are competent, but certainly…
When I saw the previous Alien film, “Prometheus” I did not like it, the main reason being that characters who were allegedly professionals acted in very unprofessional ways to advance the plot. It was poor writing, basically. But surely, I said to myself, they wouldn’t make that mistake twice, would they? Yeah, they would. (Warning:…
Recently I finished watching a fantasy tv series called “Carnival Row”. It was heavily influenced by themes of racism, the plight of refugees, slavery and even genocide. I was surprised to learn it had been criticised for this, with some people insisting that such ‘politics’ had no place in a fantasy story. However this is…
There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the…
“Always Coming Home” is something a little different. Rather than being a single narrative, it is comprised of many different parts, stories, poems, articles, even recipes. All of these serve to illustrate a culture, created by the author, of a future America. The main people described in the story are based in California, but it…
The story follows two separate protagonists who never meet. The first is Candide, who is a pilot what has crashed into the Forest (capital F intended), and is trying to find his way out. The second is Peretz, who is stuck at the Administration which has been set up to research the Forest. He too,…
"You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound. A dimension of sight. A dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone." So, continuing my journey through the Twilight…
I am a huge fan of Ursula Le Guin as I have mentioned previously, and I recently read this compilation of some of her stories, selected by her. She described in her introduction that most of the stories in this volume are what she would call science fiction, in that they deal with other planets…
You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop...the Twilight Zone. — Rod Serling Continuing my appreciation of this wonderful old series, the following are my favourites from Season 3, first aired 1961-1962. “The…
Eclectic Assemblage 