So many sci-fi authors exploring interstellar civilizations toss in some sort of faster-than-light travel or wormholes to facilitate the narrative. What I liked about Vinge was he considered how things might play out if you actually stuck to the laws of physics as we know them today.
He imagined a nomadic society which moves from star system to star system mostly trading knowledge. While they travel at sub-light speeds, they broadcast a galactic Internet’s worth of data at the speed of light. The catch is that much of it is encrypted and only they have the keys, so they have tremendous power wherever they go.
This is not to say he never considered FTL, but when he did, he went deep into its implications. It was not just a means of hopping quickly around the galaxy. He realized that it would enable outrageously powerful AI, as the speed of thought would be increased by orders of magnitude.
I really liked how he envisioned space travel and the culture that came with it. A small but rich detail was how all the time measurements where given using kiloseconds and mega seconds to describe months and years since a nomadic space tribe would have little use for calendars associated to orbits. It’s creative and thought out.
His books and short stories set in a sooner future where society and our education system is vastly different because of AR are a lot of fun as well.
Several people on Lemmy and other places recommended ‘A Fire Upon the Deep’ and ‘A Deepness in the Sky’ to me and I plowed through them. Really enjoyable reads with actually unique takes that I haven’t seen in other media even though it’s 30 years old. The aliens feel actually alien but follow a logic which I appreciate. The ‘zones of thought’ is now just forever in my head.
I wouldn’t say anything in particular sucked, it’s just that there’s nothing that sticks out. It felt more like a low budget film, but it’s not as thought provoking as low budget sci-fi films. I have to agree with the other comment, it’s very forgettable.
Shows like this continue to convince me that animation is the way to go for sci-fi and fantasy. Why spend tons on live-action actors and cgi for a show or movie to just look dated a decade later when you could just stylize the shit out of cartoon like this? Like imagine how good the GoT adaptation could have been if they would have given us a cartoon way closer to a 1:1 adaptation. I know animation can be expensive too, I just think it’s money better spent.
I liked it overall. Carter’s characterization is very different from the books, but his book characterization is so weird that I completely understand why they changed it, even if I was annoyed.
(For those who haven’t read it: book Carter is a career soldier who claims to be so old that he can’t remember how many wars he’s fought in, despite having the appearance of a man in his thirties. He was living with a family in Virginia when the American Civil War broke out and jumped at the chance to get back into combat, which he seems to live for, and he doesn’t seem to care much about the reasons for fighting: it seems like he joined the Confederate army mostly because he happened to be there at the time, and if he had been living with a family of New Yorkers he would have been just as happy to fight for the Union. The backstory about a dead family is invented for the movie; in the book he went west mostly out of boredom due to the war being over, but being an unapologetic Confederate is obviously unacceptable today so they had to do something to make him sympathetic.
On arriving on Mars after having a vision when he catches sight of the planet, book Carter immediately decides to embrace every opportunity to fight, adventure, and generally behave like an action hero who isn’t afraid to wade through rivers of blood while the bodies of his enemies pile up around him. He and Kantos Kan are really kindred spirits, whereas in the movie the enthusiastic Kan basically has to drag him into the plot after he spends the first act or so trying to avoid any possible action.)
Also the book is very specific that most Martians don’t wear clothes, but that probably wouldn’t have gone over well either, lol.
i adore the books, which are from the early 20th century. hardly derivative when they inspired 20th century greats like Ray Bradbury and Carl Sagan :) i followed this movie for years leading up to it. they completely screwed the marketing. i was disappointed, to say the least. but it is magical to see such a loved work in film. maybe someday we’ll get a reboot.
I really need to find a GOOD printed copy of the original stories. I tried reading it years ago on a digital copy and the text recognition scan was so bad, I gave up.
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