Daft Punk’s Electroma is a 2007 science fiction drama written and directed by the famous electronic house music duo, Daft Punk (Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter), who wear iconic robot outfits as part of their act. Daft Punk formed in 1993 and found success through their 1997 debut album Homework, 2001’s Discovery, and the critically mixed 2005 Human After All. Electroma, released in 2006, is an elaboration on Human After All‘s themes of technology and personal authenticity. (more…)
Tag: science fiction
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June 3, 2019 Buttercup Dew
Daft Punk’s Electroma
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“When I was little, this was a large village. And that was not too many years ago; now, there’s not so much as a single shadow. The destruction of an entire people can come about very easily!”[1]
Lao She’s Cat Country is one of the finest pieces of literature I’ve read. Written in 1932 in the long shadow of the Bolshevik Revolution and foreshadowing the Maoist terror that would wrack China, (more…)
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Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959) marked his transition from writing juvenile pulp science fiction to serious novels of ideas, in this case setting forth a highly reactionary and militarist political philosophy. Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 film of Starship Troopers takes quite a few liberties with Heinlein’s plot but manages to capture its spirit and communicate its key ideas. (more…)
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David Lynch’s third feature film is his 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic Dune. Herbert’s Dune is widely hailed as a masterpiece, while Lynch’s Dune has a much more mixed reputation, tending toward the negative. When I first saw Lynch’s Dune, I was deeply disappointed. Herbert’s novel had left a powerful and vivid impression on me, and Lynch’s vision was not my vision. (more…)
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Rakka is a science fiction short film from director Neil Blomkamp. After being propelled to fame by District 9, Blomkamp went on to make Elysium, a less well-received and overtly preachy movie that has rightly drawn the ire of White Nationalists; both Gregory Hood and Kevin MacDonald have ably covered its breathtakingly arrogant subtext and narrative shortcomings. Following up Elysium with the poorly reviewed Chappie, a multiculturalist movie about rappers and a police robot, (more…)
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“This pain, this sadness! This desperation! You know nothing about it!”
(Major story spoilers ahead.)
NieR: Automata is a critically acclaimed 2017 JRPG from renowned director Yoko Taro, and is an indirect sequel to his previous NieR and Drakenguard games. The game is a niche action-adventure gem, balancing engrossing narrative with tense, challenging combat. (more…)
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In the latest installment of Guide to Kulchur, Fróði Midjord and John Morgan discuss Andrei Tarkovsky’s Russian science fiction classic, Stalker, which is about three men living in an industrial wasteland who venture into a Zone that was left on Earth by mysterious extraterrestrials, a wilderness filled with deadly traps, at the center of which is a room that grants the innermost desires of anyone who enters. The duo discuss the film both as an allegory of a spiritual quest as well as an indictment of modernity. (more…)
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The Day of the Triffids is a 1951 novel by the English science fiction writer John Wyndham. Prior to serving in the Second World War, Wyndham wrote short stories for pulp magazines, and The Day of the Triffids was his first book, published when he was 48. It launched his short but illustrious career as a science-fiction horror writer whose premises were simple enough that they could be easily grasped, yet were boldly original. (more…)
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Mortal Engines is an action-adventure yarn spanning four books by teen fiction author Philip Reeve, first published in 2001. With the recent box-office flop of the movie adaptation, it’s an opportune time to share some thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of this enduringly popular quartet. I first read Mortal Engines and its sequels (Predator’s Gold, Infernal Devices, and A Darkling Plain) in my mid-teens, and haven’t picked them up since, so the following is entirely from a decade’s worth of offhand contemplation.
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Alec Nevala-Lee
Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction
New York: Dey Street Books, 2018“We seek nothing less than a Campbellian revolution in genre literature.” — Vox Day[1]
“The Campbell that influenced me was John W., not Joseph.” — George R. R. Martin
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1. Camille Paglia, Provocations: Collected Essays on Art, Feminism, Politics, Sex, and Education (New York: Pantheon, 2018).
Paglia is self-recommending, of course. I was a bit let down, as the subtitle seemed to promise a career-wide retrospective, while this is more like a reunion tour, with emphasis on more recent works. The key essays are a vast survey, “Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s,” a liberal education in itself; (more…)
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Jodorowsky’s Dune, Frank Pavich’s 2013 documentary, tells the story of the “greatest movie never made,” (more…)
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Robert Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers is a genre-defining classic of science fiction. First published in 1959, Heinlein’s work is audacious in propounding aristocratic militarism, will-to-power, social inequality, and contempt for liberal and mercantile values. Starship Troopers describes the path of a young man, Johnny Rico, from uncertain recruit to achieving the rank of Field Officer in an interstellar war against the “Bugs,” a species of giant arachnids. (more…)