And we’re back, still discussing that first novel I penciled when I was around ten year olds. Attack of the Killer MutantFish was an epic sci-fi action fest.
Yesterday, I did a casting call for Fred the Pet Store Owner, who fights the mutant fish. Today, I’m doing a casting call for the Mad Scientist who randomly walks into Fred’s pet shop with no explanation whatsoever and dumps toxic sludge into the tanks, thus creating enormous, super-sized killer mutant fish.
Stop laughing! You know this crap is better than half of what’s on TV today.
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN
Huh-lo! I’m a…mad sci-en-tist! I must turn these fish…into mu-tants, thus finally obtaining my rah-venge…against the cruel world that failed to heed my sci-en-tif-ic warnings. If pee-puhl con-tin-yoo…to destroy the en-vi-ro-ment…then the world will be engulfed…by mu-tant fish…just like these!
Hmmm. A valiant effort, but not what we’re looking for.
KEVIN SPACEY
There’s a saying in my home world of Mad Science Land. If you fail to listen to brilliant mad scientists, then don’t be surprised when the Earth is overrun by a race of super powerful fish. :::knocks the table twice:::
Next!
JACK NICHOLSON
You want the truth about fish?! YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH ABOUT FISH! Son, we live in a world with tanks. Who’s going to protect them? You? You pet store owner Fred Wineburg? You mock me at parties but deep down you want me on those tanks, you need me on those tanks…
I dunno. I’m not feeling it. Next!
SAMUEL L. JACKSON
Yeah I made those f*$king killer mutant fish and I hope they burn in hell!
Hmmm. I’m intrigued. Can you keep going, Sam?
SAMUEL L. JACKSON
The path of the righteous fish is beset on all sides by the inequities of the sel-fish and the tyranny of evil fish…
As discussed yesterday, when I was approximately ten years old, give or take a year, I penciled in a notebook my first novel, Attack of the Killer Mutant Fish.
Now that I’m a big time blogging mogul with 3.5 regular readers, including my Aunt Gertrude, I have the resources to turn this novel into a major movie production.
Recently, I held a casting call. The following actors read for the part of Fred the Pet Store Owner, who, as discussed yesterday, shoots all of the fish. Why a pet store owner had a gun, I don’t know. But it wasn’t because when I was ten I was a lazy writer. I purposely left it up to the reader’s interpretation.
AL PACINO
Hoowah! You little fishy finned cock-a-roaches think you can come into my establishment and eat my customers? If I was half-the man I was twenty years ago, I’d take a flamethrower to this place! Say hello to my little friend!
Al, my people will call your people. Next:
MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY
Alright, alright, alright. Hello there kemosabes. Listen, y’all need to just take a deep breathe and chill out. Take off your pants and bang on some bongo drums. All this? Right here? This life? All of this interaction? This is all just a trick. We’re all just sentient meat, fooling ourselves into thinking that our base thoughts and emotions actually matter, when in the grand scheme of things, they really don’t.
Don’t call us, Matthew. We’ll call you. Next:
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
CAN YOU SMELL WHAT FISH THE ROCK IS COOKIN’?!!
God Sakes Alive, you have to be old as shit to get that joke. Next!
ROBERT DENIRO
You bloopin’ to me? You make those little puckery bloop bloop fish faces and bloop at me? Well, I don’t see anyone else around here, so you must be talkin to me!
I don’t know. A solid performance, but I just picture Fred being younger. Next!
CLINT EASTWOOD
Go ahead. Make my filet.
(Cymbal tap – ba dum bum ching!) Sorry, I said younger!
JESSE EISENBURG
Um…yeah…um you…you…you know I didn’t ask for any of this. I’m just a guy running a pet store. I keep the pets fed and if someone wants a pet I sell them a pet. But…but….but…this? I’m not prepared for this. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this…this, what is this? Fish, these Killer Mutant Fish and all they do is run around, trying to eat all the customers? And how are they walking on land if they need to be in water?
You had it until you started asking questions.
This might be a tough one. I’ll have to think about who would make for a good Fred. If you have any ideas, please post them in the comments. Tomorrow, we’ll be casting for the part of the Mad Scientist.
I don’t remember how old I was, but I want to say probably around ten, give or take a year.
I wish I knew where it was. Probably thrown away long ago.
The title? Attack of the Killer Mutant Fish
The plot? Fred the pet store owner’s day goes haywire when a mad scientist walks in and dumps toxic ooze into his fish tanks. I had recently visited a pet store, thus providing me with the inspiration. Also, I was a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, though had I managed to get a book deal, Eastman and Laird (creators of TMNT) probably would have sued my ten-year old self.
Medium? Written in a notebook with a pencil in horrible penmanship.
(Cue Bob Saget Narrator from How I Met Your Mother Voice) – Kids, there was a time when not everyone had a computer, or if they did, it didn’t do much. People weren’t obsessed with snapping pictures of what they had for lunch and sharing it with the world, or writing angry tirades about the waitress who brought them cold food and then posting it on Facebook. When people wanted to write, they used these things called pencils to make marks on paper. You know paper right? Thin sheets made out of wood pulp? Never mind.
Review? – As Jon Lovitz’ The Critic would say, “It stinks!” There was a lot of action. The fish grow to an enormous size. They try to eat everyone. Fred shoots the mutant fish. It was pretty much devoid of any artistic merit.
Or was it? Yes, come to think of it, it was an avant grade piece way before its time. It was a grim indictment of man’s futile attempt to conquer nature. In fact, I wrote that in pencil as a subtitle, right on the first page of my notebook:
ATTACK OF THE KILLER MUTANT FISH
OR, A Grim Indictment of Man’s Futile Attempt to Conquer Nature
By: Young Bookshelf Q. Battler
I can’t say it had much in the way of character development. Fred was given no backstory whatsoever. No wife and kids that were depending on him to earn money as a pet store owner. He wasn’t a former soldier who botched up an anti-evil fish mission, forcing him to retire and languish away as a boring pet store owner until finally, fate offered him a chance to redeem himself.
And there was literally no explanation as to why a pet store owner had a gun that he was able to use to fend off the killer mutant fish. Was the pet store in a downtrodden, crime-ridden neighborhood? Was Fred an ex-member of the Yakuza, and thus he felt the need to pack heat at all times out of fear that he could be attacked by his enemies at any moment?
As for the Mad Scientist, the man didn’t even get a name. He just walks in, dumps toxic ooze into the tanks, then leaves. Kind of a jerk, really. But who was he? Was he a deranged Chemical Engineer, whose ideas were rejected one too many times by his scholarly peers, so he decided to take revenge and take over the world with an army of killer mutant fish? Perhaps he was Fred’s arch-nemesis? Maybe Fred and the Scientist once fought in battle during their Yakuza days and now were clashing again?
Personally, I just like to assume Fred stole the Mad Scientist’s woman.
Anyway, I wish I could find the notebook that contained this harrowing tale. But this blog post will serve as the treatment, so if any big time hotshot book agents and/or Hollywood bigwigs are reading, let me know if you are interested and also how much money you want to throw my way.
Some kind person put a link to my review of Blade Runner and the result was I had an all time record of 238 visitors today. Previously, I have yet to break 100.
I’ll have to look into Reddit – has anyone tried posting on it? Any experiences using it you’d care to share?
Thanks to whoever did that.
In other news, I’m almost at 3000 followers, if you want to obtain the coveted position of 3000th follower.
So for the past few weeks, I’ve been asking for your input as I build a world for a sci-fi novel that’s locked up in my brain. Naturally, I thought, why not help the process along by checking out a cult classic of Sci-Fi cinema, namely the 1982 Ridley Scott Directed film, Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford.
(Forever Cinema Trailers)
THE PLOT
Ford stars as Richard Deckard, a Blade Runner, a special type of police officer assigned to hunt down and execute replicants on site.
Replicants are bioengineered humans. They’re built by the Tyrell Corporation to be stronger, faster, smarter, or as Tyrell puts it, “More Human than the Human.” (In case you were wondering where that White Zombie song came from).
Foreseeing the problem that replicants could use their superior abilities to take over, the government outlaws them on Earth, and only allows them to be used as slave labor on off world colonies. Further, Tyrell has put in a failsafe – replicants only live for four years, so none of them really have time to learn how to get too big for their britches.
THE WORLD
In the 1980’s, Japanese tech companies were booming, so naturally the creators of the film anticipated an Asianization of American culture. Although it takes place in a futuristic Los Angeles, open area Asian bazaar style shops and sidewalk noodle joints riddle the landscape. An enormous building size image of a geisha is prominently displayed.
Even though its in the future, everything looks old and worn out, suggesting that America may one day fight itself in abject poverty, everyone living in cramped, dirty spaces, tripping over one another just to get some room. (Sometimes when you look at today’s economy reports, it feels like we’re there).
THE CLOTHES
Oddly, even though it’s LA and the depletion of the ozone layer is only going to make it hotter, everyone in this film is bundled up like its Christmastime in Minnesota. This is where some science nerd will now explain to me that global warming can actually lead to global cooling. And you’re probably right, science nerd.
THE TIME
It takes place in 2019, so about four years from now, we’ll be subject to a number of “Where are the replicants?” stories like we did this year now that we’ve reached the age of Back to the Future II.
THE TECHNOLOGY
Much of the tech in the film, at least by today’s standards, looks like it was raided from the basement storage room of a high school AV Club. There’s a lot of tube based monitors and equipment that looks like it could display microfiche in your local library. But hey, it all probably seemed like top of the line stuff in 1982.
There are flying cars, but there are also regular land cars. Deckard has a land car. He does get a ride in Edward James Olmos’ flying car. And I was glad to see this flying car did have several instruments, computer monitors, controls, and Olmos even puts on a special flying hat. In other words, the people behind this film anticipated, like I do, that flying a frigging car will be serious business and not something you can allow just an y old jerk to do.
There are video pay phones. Video phones are here, but you know my feeling on the subject. Pay phones of any kind are long gone and I doubt they’ll make a comeback.
Also, nothing to do with tech, but people smoke like chimneys throughout the film. People don’t smoke as much today and when they do, rarely in public lest they be accused of a hate crime. Enter any dive bar and you’ll find people engaged in Russian roulette competitions, chainsaw juggling, wild and crazy orgies, but anyone who lights up a stogie will be asked to leave.
LEGACY OF THE FILM
It’s fun to make fun of, but in a time where Star Wars had put Hollywood on a “space opera” kick, the people behind this film did try to make something serious. It poses a lot of questions about bioengineering, and JF Sebastian’s creepy “toy shop” certainly leaves us wondering whether maybe we should let nature run its course with the human anatomy, rather than do our own tinkering.
There’s certainly a lot to discuss about life when it comes to film – the quality of life, how little time we have, how none of us want to die, even replicants.
Olmos’ character, Gaff, speaks in a foreign language of some kind through most of the film, only to clearly annunciate at the end, regarding Deckard’s replicant love interest Rachel:
“It’s too bad she won’t live! But then again, who does?”
In other words, Gaff uses his few precious words in the film to tell us that we all tend to walk around aimlessly, trying to get something out of life, but few of us ever get where we want or are satisfied if we ever do.
IS DECKARD A REPLICANT?
If I shake my magic 8 ball, it will read, “All signs point to yes.”
Deckard dreams of a unicorn. I don’t know if that’s really a sign, because frankly, I dream about unicorns all the time. I might be a replicant then. Replicants have implanted memories and since unicorns aren’t real, and yet Deckard has a vivid memory of seeing one, the suggestion is he was built in a lab where a scientist added a false memory of a unicorn. Replicants receive false memories, supposedly in an effort to make them happier and/or more human.
Also, Deckard has kind of an odd relationship with his boss, Bryant. At the start of the film, he tells Bryant that he’s out of the Blade Runner business and won’t help him. Bryant tells Deckard he doesn’t have a choice and so Deckard just complies and goes on a replicant hunt. Does that mean Deckard is a slave of some kind, beholden to Bryant’s will? Or is Deckard just like any other human who doesn’t want to piss off an overbearing boss?
ROY BATTY
The villain of the film is Roy Batty (isn’t batty another word for nuts?) aptly played by Rutger Hauer. He’s a replicant who roams LA, cutting a wide swath through various genetic scientists in the hopes he can torture one into coming up with a cure that will allow him and his friends to live longer. None of them are able to, which drives him, well, batty.
SPOILER ALERT (Although honestly, you’ve had like thirty plus years to watch this damn thing)
The surprise of the movie comes when Batty has Deckard right where he wants him. Dickard clings to a rooftop beam, about to fall at any second. Batty can easily step on the hands of the man who has been hunting him and be the victor. But instead, Batty uses his super strength to save Deckard and pull him to the rooftop.
Why? Could it be that Batty recognizes that Deckard is a fellow replicant and doesn’t want to kill one of his own? Or, does Batty just decide that killing Deckard won’t really accomplish anything, so why spill more blood?
In the end, Batty has this iconic “TEARS IN THE RAIN” speech:
I have… seen things you people wouldn’t believe… Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those… moments… will be lost in time, like (cough) tears… in… rain. Time… to die…
Out of the mouths of replicants. That’s pretty profound stuff, isn’t it? Forget about attack ships and glittering beams, just think about all you’ve done in your life. Long before I became Blade Runner fan, I would often get choked up just by thought that one day, I’ll kick the bucket and all the memories of all my accomplishments, including starting this blog that only three people read, will vaporize into nothingness. Who knew that I was just suffering from Roy Batty sadness the entire time.
And what is a tear in the rain? A tear is happening. A memory is happening. But a tear in the rain just becomes another drop of water. A life full of memories ends, just like so many others do every other day…well, I don’t want to say that life is meaningless or “a tale told by an idiot” as Shakespeare once said, but aren’t there times when we all feel a little bit like Roy Batty?
CONCLUSIONS
It’s worth a rental. And Hollywood hasn’t shown an interest in remaking it with a bunch of dopey starlets who would probably just screw it up…yet.
I’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time, mainly because I feel like they’ve been promoting in forever. Given that it is up against Seventh Son, a fantasy film, nerds have plenty to watch this weekend, though these films may be cannibalizing one another’s profits since their core audiences are going to be the same contingent of geeks and dweebs.
That’s not an insult geeks and dweebs. I am one of you.
And sadly, since they’re both movies that cater to a younger crowd, I think they’re both going to be trounced by…dun dun dun… Spongebob: Sponge Out of Water.
But enough about business talk.
The plot? It turns out that worlds aren’t so much natural occurrences as they are business assets of a corporation owned The Abrasax family. The three heirs, played by Eddie Redmayne , Tuppence Middleton, and Douglas Booth, as heirs to a fortune often do, squabble over their inheritances, always trying to gain more planets for themselves.
But they don’t want to rule them. They want to harvest them. We’re all basically cattle and once a planet’s population exceeds its resources, the Abrasaxes have all of the people killed and somehow they are turned into a juice that can be bathed in to reverse the aging process.
Umm…good luck with that. All I can say is if you bathe in a juice made out of me, you’re going to be pretty disgusted.
Somehow, and they don’t really explain how, but Jupiter Jones, played by Mila Kunis, is a reincarnated version of the Abrasax kids’s mother. That’s a problem for them, seeing as how their mother, before being murdered by Redmayne’s character, Balem, wrote it into her will that her reincarnated self would inherit Earth.
Sidenote – this movie realized that I’ve done very little to ensure that my assets will be transferred to my reincarnated self, and thus as soon as I’m done writing this review, I’m going to get my attorney on the horn posthaste.
Keep in mind that at the start of the film, Jupiter has no idea that she’s a reincarnated space queen. She was born a Russian immigrant and cleans rich people’s toilets for a living.
Middleton’s character, Kalique, is happy to have a version of her mother back. Booth’s Titus contrives a scheme to marry Jupiter, claiming that doing so will protect Earth and keep it out of Balem’s grubby mitts. However, Titus has his own evil plans.
Here’s a rundown of a conversation I had with the Wachowskis in my mind as I watched the film:
ME: So this guy is trying to marry a reincarnated version of his mother?
WACHOWSKIS: Yes.
ME: That isn’t incest?
WACHOWSKIS: No. She’s not actually his mother. She’s his reincarnated mother.
ME: But she’s his mother brought back to life so…
WACHOWSKIS: SHUT UP AND WATCH THE PRETTY SPECIAL EFFECTS!!!!
Anyway, Channing Tatum plays Jupiter’s protector, Caine Wise, a human-wolf hybrid, and at this point, the man’s abs must be a multi-million dollar business.
HOLLYWOOD: Channing, we want you in our next picture.
CHANNING: I’m gonna have to charge you a million per ab.
And much to my surprise, Sean Bean was in the movie and he didn’t die. He dies in every movie he’s in, so it was kind of a disappointment that his character didn’t bite the dust, buy the farm, or kick the bucket.
All in all, for a February film, it was pretty decent. I’ve seen ads for this forever, and when a movie is hyped for this long, you kind of go into it expecting your socks to be knocked off, and usually they never are. But sci-fi nerds and space geeks will be pleased. The Wachowskis of Matrix fame are masters of the genre and they don’t disappoint with their special effects skills. People fly, there’s space craft warfare, and so on.
Plus, the scene lampooning the bureaucratic process that Jupiter has to go through to be named Queen was amusing.
One minor complaint – there were a lot of characters, aliens, technologies, organizations – in short, just a lot going on. It leaves you with questions that unfortunately a movie just doesn’t have time to answer.
The special effects alone are worth seeing on the big screen though, and let’s face it, you’ve got nothing else better to do this weekend, so go see it.
Gonna go out on a limb here and guess this is a robot.
Geeks, dweebs, nerds, and poindexters of the world, assemble, for I have a doozy of a question for you.
What is the difference between an Android and a Robot?
As we’ve previously discussed, I’m working on a science fiction novel, and seeking the advice of nerds everywhere for help. Don’t be offended by being called a nerd. It’s a badge of honor, really. Frankly, who wants advice about robotics from a non-nerd?
This is total nerd stuff, baby.
I find that in the science fiction world, the words “android” and “robot” are often used interchangeably. But should that be the case?
The best advice I’ve found thus far:
“A robot can, but does not necessarily have to be in the form of a human, but an android is always in the form of a human.”
– Edmond Woychowsky, TechRepublic – “The Difference Between Robots and Androids, 2010
Well, wait a minute. That sounds simple enough at first, but what about C3P0? He and his buddy RD2D are invariably referred to as “droids” in the Star Wars universe. Haven’t you heard the infamous line from Obi-Wan Kenobi, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for?”
C3P0 has a torso, arms, legs, a face with eyes, he is definitely modeled after a human, but he’s also built out of a golden colored metal, his arms and legs only move so much, his eyes are pretty much just sockets, and there’s just a slit where his mouth should be.
That’s not exactly a human, is it? What did Edmond have to say?
“It can be argued that an android should be able to pass as a human in natural light. So, if you subscribe to this belief, C-3PO from Star Wars and R. Giskard Reventlov from Isaac Asimov’s The Robots of Dawn are robots, not androids.”
Seriously? So George Lucas got something wrong? In addition to Jar Jar???
So, if you take this android vs. robot information seriously, then C3P0 is a robot. The robots from the film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, are robots (that’s a given, since they didn’t call it, I, Android).
Rosie, the Jetson family’s maid, is a robot. C3P0, Rosie, and the I, Robot bots, all might have human-inspired designs, but if you were to see them, you would say, “Hey, that’s a robot!”
Apparently, the question of whether an “artificial being” is a robot or an android boils down to whether or not you can tell when you first meet said being. As Woychowsky notes, Data from Star Trek: Next Generation, does appear to be a human, “albeit with an odd complexion.”
As an additional example, I would submit that Ash from the original Alien movie is an android. He was so passable as a human that this is actually a major plot point of the film – he was passing as a crew member but in secret, was an android with a special mission. For part of the film, the audience doesn’t even know he’s not a human.
So what say you, readers? I need your nerdy opinions, because the novel I am working on, and sadly, procrastinating on, might feature robots, or it might feature androids, but I want to make sure I’m using the right terminology so that my nerd credentials are not questioned.
“A towel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Bookshelf Battle 