Author: photog

The Danger of “Best Of” Lists

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Movie Reviews , , , ,

Recently I went on-line and found a best twenty-five modern science fiction movies list.  And I went through it and found half a dozen movies I hadn’t seen.  And I gave the list to Camera Girl and told her to submit it to her friend the local librarian to get me the DVDs through interlibrary loan.  Well, the only movie they had the first day was “Children of Men.”  Last night we watched it.  Oh boy.

I knew that it was a dystopian alternate history movie where humanity become completely infertile.  What I didn’t know was that with the exception of Michael Caine I would hate everyone in the movie.  It takes place around London in the year 2027, I think.  London is stewing in a smoldering revolt by the illegal immigrants that are being deported.  The plot revolves around a pro-immigrant terrorist group that has found an immigrant girl who is pregnant and the attempt to assist her to escape to an international group called the Human Project that intends to cure the world’s infertility.

I won’t go into a lot of detail because this isn’t a review.  It’s just a rant.  Clive Owen, Julianne Moore and Chiwetel Ejiofor play main characters and I found myself disliking them ever more deeply throughout the movie.  Basically, this is a pro-immigrant, anti-western civilization diatribe with environmental hand-wringing thrown in for good measure.  And the whole film is ugly, brutal and depressing from start to finish.  When it was over I apologized to Camera Girl for not shutting it off after the first five minutes.  As I mentioned I liked Michael Caine’s character.  He’s an old hippie-stoner which isn’t great but it is Michael Caine so he makes him lovable.  But that’s hardly a good reason to watch this mess.

Well, I guess I should go back to that list and get a better idea what the rest of the movies are really going to be like.  If the guy who made this list thought this was a good movie, then his judgement is certainly suspect from my point of view.  You know, if all of a sudden, every woman on Earth became infertile, I’m guessing that all of the biologists in the world would be working on that problem night and day and I’m pretty sure they’d at least figure out what the cause was.  In the movie they don’t even know that.  This alternate history is so depressingly bleak that I can’t see why anyone would make this movie.  I’m left with the idea that this was some kind of moral lesson to let us know that not treating illegal immigrants like members of the family is so evil that Gaia will punish us by making us sterile and wiping us off the planet.  That isn’t science fiction.  That’s propaganda to make the Left feels virtuous.  The only part of the movie that I liked was at the end where the protagonists are leaving a battleground where the immigrants are battling the British Army and suddenly a few fighter jets go overhead and rain down death and destruction on the immigrants.  I think I gave out a little cheer.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 10FEB2026 – The Lunar Option

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And now he should change his name to D. D. Harriman. I’ve also always felt the Moon was a better choice. Mostly because with basic chemical rockets, it’s 3-5 days away and there are LOTS of windows to reach it. Mars is 140+ days, and that window is only roughly every two years. If you have a small initial Mars colony, no matter how many ships you have and the Stuff hits the fan, you’re on your own for on average 18 months away from outside help. With Luna its 3-5 days depending on lunar phase and you may be able just to lifeboat back to earth orbit.

Looking the 140 day or so timeline is like the early Europe to American colonies distance from Europe and America had air and food and water. And yet we still had Roanoke and lost 1/2 of Plimouth Colony the first year. Luna lets you learn in a slightly harsher environment with at least some safety net. Mars really has to wait until there are constant thrust engines (be they Nuclear Thermal, Fission/fusion pulsed or straight up fusion) so we can have .01 or .1 g constant and not have to use Hohmann (minimal energy) orbits and have 14 or 4 day transits to Mars/ Nearly every thing Elon (pardon me Delos) had planned for Mars is useful on the moon and can be further refined for future Mars work.

Also, if we’re going to do this, it should be done as G*d, Von Braun and Arthur C. Clarke intended with an orbital station to fuel lunar Starship-like beasts and send them on to the moon. We need the infrastructure. Maybe not immediately but once we try to start moving large quantities back and forth. the division of labor would help.

Elon Musk Bows to the Scientific and Economic Wisdom of photog and Pivots to Luna City Goal

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Last June I wrote a post called Moon Mining in which I made a lot of hyperbolic statements about my future as a miner of precious metals on the Moon.  But in a more serious vein (no pun intended?) I said, “But seriously, I think there is a lot more likelihood of the Moon becoming economically useful to humans than Mars.  The difference in distance alone makes Mars almost impossibly difficult for manned flights.

The Moon on the other hand was reached more than fifty-five years ago by men whose technological capabilities were rudimentary compared to what we have at our disposal today.  Imagine what improvements modern computing power and automation could do to make reaching and working on the Moon safer and easier.”

And then there’s this post from last week, “It’s Shiny and New” where I talk about Luna City.

And here we are a few days later and this headline appears:

“In a reversal, SpaceX prioritizes ‘city’ on the moon over Mars project, Musk says”

In the article it says, “Elon Musk said on Sunday that SpaceX has shifted its focus to building a “self‑growing city” on the moon, which could be achieved in less than 10 years.

SpaceX still intends to start on Musk’s long-held ambition of a city on Mars within five to seven years, he wrote on his X social media platform, “but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.”

What else do I need to say.  Elon, there’s no shame in admitting you’re wrong when someone gently reminds you that wisdom is still a higher authority than Midas-like wealth.  Well, he’s still relatively young and there’s time for him to learn what’s really important, namely building Luna City and naming the main street Neil Armstrong Blvd.

Seriously, I was starting to doubt whether he wasn’t just blowing smoke with all the Mars mission talk.  That stuff is a generation away.  Building and maintaining a permanent Moon base is an achievable goal that will show us whether human habitation beyond the Earth is feasible and profitable.  If it isn’t it’s better to learn that from a place where retreat takes a couple of days rather than a year.  Trillions of dollars and, more importantly, lives would be saved.

So, get going Mr. Musk.  Sell the boys in Washington a plan to build something like a town on the Moon.  You’ll make a whole lot of money and you’ll spark the imagination of a generation of boys whose grandfathers thrilled to the Apollo landings.  Just make sure you do a good job on the accounting so it won’t come back to haunt you when the Democrats come back into power.  They’re a vindictive bunch and they love to punish people whom they hate and from everything I’ve read they hate you now even more than they hate people like me.  And that’s a whole lot of hate anyway you stack it.

I have to confess I’m actually kind of excited to hear this goal.  I think he can get this done.  I’m guessing Trump would like to have his name involved in it too.  That quite a combination.

Bad Bunny Review

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Tyler over at the Portly Politico has bravely watched the Super Bowl Halftime in order that others could be spared the horror.  If you follow the link back you’ll find out what he thought.

I applaud his courage but I would not copy it.  Leaving organized sports in the rearview mirror was a wise move for me.  My stomach lining has benefitted magnificently from the decision.