The thing I love the most about science fiction as a genre is that it gives us an ideal venue for a deep exploration of every aspect of the human condition. It gives us a way to peer into our future, to explore the possible outcomes of our decisions, to ask ourselves what exactly it means to be human. It also gives us just enough distance, by way of allegory, to seek our answers to these questions in a way that lets us take one step away from our own biases, and thereby examine those biases more closely. This of course was why so many classic science fiction stories are so very timeless, and why their themes appear again and again, across different mediums and with new and interesting twists, and this is why I am and always have been an absolute science fiction addict. Give me classic Twilight Zone and a stack of old issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and you give me happiness, tied up with a bow that is intricately knotted and possibly hiding sharp edges.

As a veteran scifi nerd and a fan of the Alien films (though I have committed perhaps the ultimate sin in preferring Aliens to Alien), I was pretty excited about Ridley Scott’s new prequel to the series, Prometheus. I was incredibly excited after seeing this TED Talk from the future, which I thought was a particularly brilliant piece of marketing:

Even more promising was this “commercial” for the film’s resident robot, David:

Clearly this film had the potential to turn over some incredibly rich earth. Sadly, these two short promotional films were, in my opinion, greater triumphs of storytelling than the film itself was. Continue reading →