In
2016 the
Search for
Interesting
Hollywood
Aliens had a winner: the heptapods from
Arrival. The real reason for declaring the heptapods a winner was that I actually paid $$$ to see
Arrival in a theater. That was no small achievement since before seeing
Arrival I had not been in a movie theater for ten years
Each year since
2012, I've been searching for Interesting Hollywood Aliens and I have not had much luck. 2017 is a particularly dismal year for the interesting alien market. Consequently, for 2017 I'm opening up SIHA to a wider range of
science fiction stories: this year, I'm searching for
Anything interesting from Hollywood.
I'm a Sci Fi glutton, so I like science fiction stories that include several imaginary future technologies such as faster-than-light space travel, time travel and technology-assisted telepathy. However, for SIHA 2017, I'll settle for a Hollywood production that explores even just one such Sci Fi technology in an interesting way. I'll provide the aliens.
Nominations
1.
The Discovery. I'm nominating
The Discovery in the category of time travel science fiction.
The Discovery is similar to the film
Groundhog Day and
The X-Files episode, "Monday".
The Discovery is more of a fairy tale than science fiction. Don't look to for
The Discovery any gee wiz science or special effects.
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| Groundhog Day on steroids. |
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| time loops on the beach eventually save Mara's son |
In
The Discovery,
Robert Redford finds that by recording a dead person's electroencephalogram you can follow them into their next life. And not only do we all have a next life, but in that new life we can correct something that went terribly wrong in our previous life.
The Discovery makes no attempt to explain how any of this is possible. However, I'm intrigued by the idea of repeatedly looping through time in an effort to "get something right".
 |
| Rooney Mara |
Memory
What is there to correct in the lives of Robert and
Rooney? Robert has endless guilt over the death of his wife, who killed herself because she felt neglected. Rooney has guilt over falling asleep, allowing her young son to wander off to the beach alone and drown.
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| Jason the necronaught |
Robert's son (played by
Jason Segel) becomes caught up in a vortex of guilt that circles around his mother's death and the drowning of Rooney's son. Jason is in the right place at the right time and so he becomes the first person to discover that what people experience after death is a "replay" of their life, a kind of second chance, an opportunity to correct an error they made in their previous life. But how much do people remember when their lives are "rebooted" in this way? And what if there is competition for control of the timeline? And what should we call someone like Jason who can repeatedly die and endlessly relive his past until he gets it just right...a necronaught?
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| Programming 101: creating a digital ghost |
2.
Marjorie Prime. Miss Marjorie is old and her brain's function is becoming unreliable, memory storage system included. Also of concern in
Marjorie Prime is the memory system of a computer (a
Prime) that is shown at work trying to learn the details of Marjorie's life as it was lived with her long-dead husband. Set several decades in our future, we are asked to believe that future computer technology will allow us to create simulations of the people we know.
Given the available technology, would a widow really want to start living with a digital copy of the dead spouse? Maybe Marjorie's daughter wants to use the
Prime as a Trojan horse, a probe that can uncover a deeply hidden memory from Marjorie's past. Or, maybe the
Prime is just a high-tech baby sitter for Marjorie?
Or maybe not. But what if you could program a
Prime to not only know the mundane past but also live out your shared fantasies? If computers of the future can pass the Turing Test, need they only provide us with companionship and the opportunity to live comfortably in our own fantasy worlds? And what happens to the
Prime when Miss Marjorie dies? Why not just switch to playing the role of a simulation of Marjorie and become
Marjorie's Prime? Why not become Marjorie's ghost and haunt her daughter? Maybe it is better to let painful old memories slip away rather than enshrine them in digital archives.
I'm a huge fan of science fiction stories about copies of people: particularly
clones and what I call
replicoids. I've never seen
Marjorie Prime, but I'm encouraged by the willingness of someone in Hollywood to take a look at near future artificial life without having to turn the story into a version of
Shelley's Frankenstein.
3.
Battle of Memories. A memory erasure and mind transfer story.
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| Life 1.0 in 1968 |
4.
OtherLife. Nanotechnology allows the insertion of memories into brains.
5.
Life. I'm including
Life here in this list as a way to illustrate the horrible job that Hollywood has done this year in providing us films about new alien lifeforms.
Life is a horror movie in a Sci Fi setting. For me,
Life brings back sad memories of other movies such as
The Green Slime. Ew. Enough said.
6.
Flatliners (a remake) release: September 29, 2017
7.
Blade Runner 2049 (a sequel) release: October 6, 2017
8.
The Man from Earth: Holocene (a sequel) release: Oct 13, 2017
Jump to October: the
2017 SIHA prize.
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| Wait! Use this body! |
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