This brief video essay on the source of our collective craving for “the awful futures of apocalyptic fiction” is really well done. Skillfully executed and thought-provoking. A worthwhile investment of five reflective minutes. Here’s the description: In the first two decades of the new millennium, stories of the post-apocalypse have permeated pop culture, from books…
Tag: Science Fiction
Short Film: ‘2084’
Remember: You must conform. Better yet: Doughnut thing. (Watch for explanation.)
Ursula K. Le Guin: Poets and visionaries are “realists of a larger reality”
Here are some powerful, moving, and beautiful words from Ursula K. Le Guin at the recent National Book Awards, where she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and used the opportunity to talk about the value of visionary literature and the ugliness and danger of treating books as pure commodities: I rejoice…
Teeming Links – May 23, 2014
Decline of religious belief means we need more exorcists, say Catholics: “The decline of religious belief in the West and the growth of secularism has ‘opened the window’ to black magic, Satanism and belief in the occult, the organisers of a conference on exorcism have said. The six-day meeting in Rome aims to train about…
Fearless Artist: Remembering Giger
Jason V. Brock reflects on Giger’s legacy and relates his personal meeting with Giger at the artist’s home in Switzerland.
Teeming Links – April 11, 2014
Apparently, the whole of West Virginia has now become a sacrifice zone for the coal industry. Did you know there’s an average of one train derailment every single day in America? This is why the oil transport industry is basically a giant, horrible, environmentally apocalyptic accident just waiting to happen. You know all that propaganda…
Superfluous humans in a world of smart machines
Remember Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian short story “The Veldt” (excerpted here) with its nightmare vision of a soul-sapping high-technological future where monstrously narcissistic — and, as it turns out, sociopathic and homicidal — children resent even having to tie their own shoes and brush their own teeth, since they’re accustomed to having these things done…
Make Mine a Double: On Being a Pod Person
“STUART” SAYS: Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the first film I remember seeing that actually terrified me. I was so young — I saw it when I was still just a highly impressionable child — and the concept driving the film was utterly, perfectly terrifying: What if your loved ones were replaced by emotionless…
Teeming Links – October 4, 2013
Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net To preface today’s (short but dense) collection of recommended and necessary reading, here’s a lengthy opening word about the ultimate closing word — which is to say, several excerpts from a recent article about the upsurge of apocalyptic themes in American entertainment. As we all know, there’s been…
Ray Bradbury: A life of mythic numinosity
Long-time Teeming Brain readers are well aware that Ray Bradbury frequently comes up in conversation here. Like so many other people, and as I detailed three years ago in “The October Mystique: 7 Authors on the Visionary Magic of Ray Bradbury,” I tend to think of him especially when October and the autumn season roll…