Decipher Scifi : The Show About How And Why

Mary Shelley and The Book Volcanoes and the year with no summer. Women writing books. Philosophers and children of philosophers. Trendsetting The movie vs the book. The beginning of scifi. The ways that each broke boundaries in their own ways. Scary Was it scary at the time? The movie intro. Everything that’s cliché now was new once. Playing God Science, evil science, and playing god. The ethics of mad science. Science Horror How to take the cutting edge and make it a horror story. Electricity. X-rays. Quantum stuff. Nano bio tech now? Deepak Chopra is full of crap. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: Project Gutenberg (ebook)Project Gutenberg (audibook) Young Frankenstein: Amazon The "Slip n Slide" scene from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: YouTube Support the show!

This movie is weird David Lynch. Return of the Jedi. Different editions of the film. Alan Smithee. Internal monologues. Dune politics Before Game of Thrones, this was a new level of deep. Game theory and politics. Anti-digitalism Mentats. Eyebrows. Spice Like oil? Drugs? Treatment of Homosexuality Was Frank Herbert homophobic? Considering the man and the time in which it was written. Gods and Cults How the movie and the book had opposite lessons. Making it rain. After the Gold Rush by Miles Greb: Gold Rush Comics Dune + Jodorowsky's Dune by Double Feature podcast: Double Feature Dune by Frank Herbert: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

Video Games As children of the 90s, we have to wax nostalgic over the Wing Commander video games. They were really, really important at the time. Ground-breaking, even. PC games pre-windows. FMV. 1990 Wing Commander 1991 Wing Commander 2 1994 Wing Commander 3 5 million bux 1996/7 Wing Commander 4 10 million bux 1999 Wing Commander Movie 30 million bux Chris Roberts Director of the games was also director of the film! We hypothesize based on zero knowledge of anything how it may have been difficult for this first-time feature film director. We consider whether he is the George Lucas of video games, in both the good or bad senses. Kilrathi Cat creatures? This may not have been clear in the film. Hairless cats. Mister colbert, mount the forward laser pointer! Space Combat and Naval/Air Combat Simplifications of space combat, ignoring the vast distances and incredible speeds in their portrayals. Things that did it pretty right.

Movie Production Issues Lack of studio support. Poor audience test results. VERY small number of screens. Somehow, a cult hit after release. Why Do People Love This Movie? Has internet cult hit status. Why? Appealing to elitism and cynicism? Fart jokes? Love it or hate it. Christopher Has a Problem With This Movie It feels mean, basically. Also the extrapolations it makes are unreasonable as far as I’m concerned. Dumbing Down Society Network covered similar ground in the 1970s. Whose Fault is this Situation? The yuppies for not reproducing more? The “dumb” people? The system? Corporatism, selfishness, etc? Human Evolution Defining terms because people use them in the wrong way too often. How humanity actually evolves. Dysgenics. Why the movie is wrong. Bad Things “Crab mentality.” Self absorption. Laziness. Selfishness. Willful ignorance. Materialism. Design for Idiots Actually there are some interesting examples here. Simplification of UI. “Idiot-proofing.” Automation. How Do

Ted Chiang, Guest Co-Host Thanks to Ted for coming on and helping us figure out what’s going on in Looper. Rather than an interview, Ted is a fully-fledged guest co-host with all the power that entails. :) Plot Outline This gets a little convoluted, because the movie is not incredibly worried about logical consistency. Looper Isn’t Actually About Loops Despite appearances and the language in the film about loops and looping, we decide that either there are no paradoxical loops or the movie just doesn’t make a lot of sense in this regard. Or maybe both things. Probably both. Diagramming Timelnes We straighten out how many Bruces/JGLs there have been and how they all lived out their lives. It might be more than you think! Ted has to reign us in so we don’t spend the whole show making diagrams with straws. :) no straws, but we spent some time with a whiteboard. too much time. here is a sampling CC-BY-NC Motherhood Actually it turns out this movie is about motherhood (an u

People Really Love This Franchise Fandom. Why do people love this so much? Why Are We Not Bananas About Star Wars? Fantasy vs. science fiction. Humanities, sciences. Star Wars is a “fairy tale.” Childhood Memories People bonding with Star Wars in their youth. Watching it with the kids. There are younger people who actually dig the prequel trilogy, believe it or not. Science in Star Wars Canons. Robots. Spaceships. FTL. Gravity. The Force. Planets. Language. Death Star Scales Big, bigger, and biggest! Engineering and construction. Military and civilian populations. Technology and The Force “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” Star Wars Movies: Star Wars 'Filmumentaries' by Jamie Benning: Filmumentaries Robot Chicken Star Wars Parodies: iTunesAmazon Bad Lip Reading Star Wars (especially the songs!): YouTube Emo Kylo Ren: Twitter Support the show!

Our Star Wars meta discussion covers merchandising revolutions, VFX, viewing order (machete!), Star Wars Revisited, Star Wars Despecialized Edition, more. VFX George Lucas. Industrial Light and Magic. Practical effects vs. CG. Merchandising/Marketing Star Wars was a revolution in movie merchandising. Official Release Editions Original Trilogy only because the prequels are less complicated and we just kinda don’t care 1985 VHS, pretty much theatrical 1993 Definitive Collection (The Laserdisc). Grognards dig this one. For some reason. 1997 Special Edition - the one that ruined Star Wars according to nerds. Reportedly cost like $10 million to do this work and it just made everyone mad. Lots of CGI was overlaid atop non-CG stuff from the original. New scenes, different music. Introduced the Greedo shooting first thing, which is stupid and paints the character of Han incorrectly. 2004 Original Trilogy DVDs - More changes. Nerds say the color correction is garbage, sound was messed up. 2006

Carl Sagan Our love for Carl. How his character and interests manifest in the characters in the film. SETI What it is. Why it is. Why is doesn’t get taken seriously. Their website. Real Science The story of Carl’s question for Kip Thorn producing actual time travel science. Black holes and wormholes. Carl’s Model Scientist The Jodie Foster character really emulates Carl in a lot of ways. Also partially based on SETI astronomer Jill Tarter. Role Models/Parents The dad in the movie. Carl Sagan’s gentle and understanding skepticism. Aliens How to communicate with aliens. Dimensions and moves of communication. Atheism/Agnosticism No one trusts atheists. Our feelings on the Jodie Foster character and our own positions on things. Contact - by Carl Sagan: iTunesAmazon Cosmos (1980): YouTube Cosmos (2015): iTunesAmazon Support the show!

90s We’re from there! We love the fashion. And the music! Hacker Taxonomy Hackers, crackers, script kiddies, etc. Kevin Mitnick Huge in the new at the time. Media coverage. The model for Dade’s legal situation. Hacking Hacking, social engineering, dumpster diving. Doxxing Ruining Agent Gill. Reddit. Ghost in the Wires - by Kevin Mitnick: iTunesAmazon Freedom Downtime: iTunesAmazon Mr Robot: iTunesAmazon Security Now: Support the show!

Philip K Dick The importance of his work. Valis experience. Drugs! PKD’s place in the pantheon of science fiction writers, among Asimov, Bradbury and others. Humanity. Dignity. Technology vs humanity. As we come closer to the machine, the machine comes closer to us. -Daniel Abella Daniel Abella Movies Based on the Work of PKD About Which We Have Something to Say Blade Runner Total Recall A Scanner Darkly Minority Report Paycheck Next Screamers The Adjustment Bureau Man in the High Castle Philip K. Dick Film Festival Indie sci-fi film festival. Featuring a bunch of interesting films, shorts, and documentaries. Even one video game! Here are some trailers: Patreon We’ve just launched our Patreon to help us improve the show! Check out the Support the Show page to see our spiel. The Philip K Dick Film Festival: Minority Report: iTunesAmazon A collection of free PKD audiobooks and ebooks: The Man in the High Castle:

Dying Sun Sun science. Stages and timeline of sun death. Spaceship Solar radiation. Reflector shields. Ion drive. Magical gravity. Oxygen garden. Sun room. The Crew LOVE pragmatic Chris Evans. Our favorite person. Cillian is always great. Earth room holo tech. The different captains and their madness. Jumping through space! PS: we’ve covered this before, in episode 1. Third Act Thoughts on the third act juxtaposed with the first two. Tough Decisions Why return trip? Rendezvous a good idea? Thinning the herd. Pragmatic Chris Evans again. Bomb Scene We looooooooooove the score around this whole thing. Post-Credits Secret Scene An alleged intro to the Sunshine script by Alex Garland: Solaris: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

We realize that there are some very obvious omissions from our lists. In the episode we address these, so check out the episode to see how we treat your favorite thing! We welcome you to contact us to tell us how wrong we are. Please! Especially if we left out your very obvious #1. We’d like to hear from you. Science Fiction Film Podcast - Top 5 Sci-Fi TV Shows: Black Mirror: Netflix Babylon 5: iTunesAmazon Battlestar Galactica: iTunesAmazon Humans: iTunesAmazon Futurama: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

Language Spanish, French, Transatlantic Accent. Class identifier. Norman invasion. Linguistic bigotry. Rich Folks Facial branding. Fancy Pip Boys. Differences in rich and poor tech. Magical Healing Chamber How does it work? Neurological limitations. Altering personality. Neural Tech Brain storage implants. Encryption. Kill switches. Exo Suits REALLY cool installation montage. Order of installation operations. Current tech. Warhammer Space Marines. Space Settlement Voices from L5! Space planes. Torus settlements. Artificial gravity. Division of rich and poor. Space exploration Stanford Torus Donald Davis CC-0 Voices From L5: The High Frontier - by Gerard O'Neill: Amazon District 9: Amazon Support the show!

50s Pulp Stories Chewed to bits by giant turtles! The Pulpiest Pulp. The pulp school L. Ron Hubbard came from. The book should not stand out much against this background. Except it came out in the 80s! The Film DUTCH TILTS. The book Hubbard most wanted made into a movie. Travolta stood behind it as a love letter to Scientology. Reportedly, interference from Scientology higher-ups destroyed the whole thing, and then they threw John Travolta under the bus. Earth After 1000 Years Nature would take over. Paper would waste away. People would… start to act like chimps? Chernobyl. The Koream DMZ. The Fermi Paradox Read about the paradox on Wikipedia. The Psychlos as the great filter. They’re Made Out of Meat on The Truth Podcast. Judging Alien Intelligence Psychlos underestimating humans. Tool use and language. Alien Design In the book, they were feline! Douchey Klingons. Breathable atmosphere. High and low gravity. Cats are jerks. Intergalactic Civilization Why gold? Why slaves? Corporate

Anime We watched a lot of it in highschool. How this film transcends the norm. Timeline of anime and the cyberpunk aesthetic. Influence The influences that went into this movie. The huge influence this movie had on everything after. Plot For once we have to lay out the plot of the movie in detail, because it’s kind of complicated! The Opening Scene Awesome. Exploding heads. Japanese pornography laws. Encryption as armament. Cybernetics/Cyborgs The spectrum on jacked-in-ness in the movie. Taxonomy of androids, cyborgs, and robots. The Soul/Ghost Mind-body dualism. The treatment of consciousness in the film. Evolution in Binary Emergent AI. What is life? Evolution of digital life forms. Ghost in the Shell (original manga): Amazon Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex: iTunesAmazon The Matrix: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

Why does everyone love this movie? Underdogs, sticking it to the man, engaging with our sense of justice and living the American Dream! Or something. Genetic Determinism The world of Gattaca banks on this big-time, but in real it’s much more complicated. Nature AND nurture. People are more than the genes they start with. Designer Babies Current practices with in vitro and in vivo baby testing. Down syndrome. The New Eugenics Racism. “Positive” and “negative.” American eugenics programs. Medical choices are eugenic. Genetic Discrimination Loooooong list of inconveniences Ethan Hawke has to keep up with to not get caught. Financial arrangements. Colloquial speech in Andrew Niccol’s films. Genetic Determinism and Gene Therapy in Gattaca - by David A Kirby: In Time - Decipher SciFi episode 11: Support the show!

FX How they produced the “zoom” sequences in the film. Color grading. Brain Drugs Drugs as tools. 20% brain myth. Christopher’s past caffeine issues. Drugs have side effects, like blacking out, maybe murdering folks. Intelligence How do we define intelligence? Social? Knowledge? Pattern recognition? Analysis? Synthesis? Crazy neuro physical adaptation. Thought Experiments Would you want the drug? How could this affect society? Going into politics? Support the show!

The Film’s Marketing Really cool Youtube channel. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Spoiler policies. The Book Serially published on Andy Weir’s blog. Accidental best-seller. Nailed the Science Research. Space travel is dangerous. Radiation shielding. IRL Travel to Mars Mars One. Space X. ELON MUSK. Settlement. Water on Mars Liquid salinated water. Frozen water under surface. NASA sterilization. Worth it? Robots? Human inspiration. Settling/Colonizing Mars Growing or shipping food. Resourcefulness of Astronauts Pretty much have to be MacGyver. Overcoming functional fixedness. Digital Dads - Exploring the Final Frontier: Part 1Part 2 The Case For Mars - by Robert Zubrin: iTunesAmazon Spin - by Robert Charles Wilson: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

Biological Immortality Telomeres. Telomerease. Garbage collection. Avoiding cancer. The Immortalists. Biopharmaceutical DRM Bitcoin. Digital wealth transfer. Terminator genes. Bio-pharma IP law. Economics and Time Inflation Wealth and life evaporate with each passing second. This is on top of inflation used on purpose to thin the herd. Time in the film must be only artificially finite. Stratified Society Geographic and economic lockdown. Banlieue 13. [youtube]Md30EDh60Us[/youtube] Tech Skin displays. Biological immortality. Payphones. Electric classic cars. Time Security Cillian Murphy is lawful good. Minute men. Bad system design: could use personal transfer limits. Arm wrestling. Immortality getting boring Hoarding of wealth. Artificial scarcity. Inequality for All: iTunesAmazon The Immortalists: iTunesAmazon The Economics of In Time: Support the show!

Climate Disaster Colbert talks about it a bunch. Chris goes all Pollyanna. The Newsroom Climate episode (embedded above) Traveling From Earth Stargates. Gravity wells. Luck they didn’t wind up inside a sun. Space Colonies Space X! Mars One! Christopher gushes about Elon Musk for thirty minutes. Gifted Children And Rubbish Fathers Will Robinson. Ahmed Mohamed.  Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Ghengis Khan? Elon Musk? Future Tech Cryo sleep. Holographic communications. Vlogging via watch. Video Communications and Holography [youtube]Y-P1zZAcPuw[/youtube] The Newsroom - climate change interview: YouTube Lost in Space (the original television series): iTunesAmazon Revelation Space - by Alastair Reynolds: iTunesAmazon Support the show!