Tag Archives: scifi

Review of the Movie: “Demolition Man” (1993)

demo poster

Poster for the 1993 film “Demolition Man”

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Last night I finally got around to watching the 1993 film Demolition Man starring Sylvester Stallone as Detective John Spartan (some of these made up names are lame) and Wesley Snipes as Simon Phoenix. This is an action/adventure science fiction film with some unique insights on the future, but I’ll get to that.

The story opens in 1996 Los Angeles. Spartan is in a helicopter with two other cops (the pilot Zachary Lamb is played by Grand L. Bush, who played “Little Johnson” in the 1988 classic Die Hard).

Spartan is closing in on his nemesis, the notorious criminal Simon Phoenix, who is holding hostages taken from a commercial aircraft. This L.A. is even more brutal and lawless than the actual Los Angeles in the 1990s, already establishing a break between the film and the reality of the audience.

In typical “Rambo” style, Spartan breaks into the bad guy headquarters and caps off all of the baddies before confronting Phoenix. A heat scan didn’t show any signs of the hostages and Spartan and Phoenix fight over where they are. But Phoenix has rigged enough gasoline and C4 to blow the building into orbit.

Spartan drags Phoenix outside just in time before the whole building goes up (there’s a reason Spartan is called “The Demolition Man”). Turns out the hostages were in the building all along. Phoenix said that Spartan knew that and didn’t care. I guess L.A. coroners in this movie are dumb because they should have figured out Phoenix killed the hostages (no heat signatures) well before Spartan’s arrival.

Both Phoenix and Spartan are convicted of their crimes. Spartan is sentenced to 70 years cyrofreeze. While he’s under, his brain will be reorganized to give him more productive behaviors upon thawing. So both of these men undergo a deep freeze.

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Counting Down From Seven

boardwalk

PHOTO PROMPT © Peter Abbey

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How did I get to be so old? No, don’t answer that. Maybe I’ll just sit on a bench here on the pier. That’s better. Only us retirees out on a Wednesday. What time is it? Says nearly 9:15 a.m. on this funky handheld the alien gave me.

Well, he said he was an alien. Looked human to me when he accosted me in the Safeway parking lot last week. Countdown says seven minutes as of now. I wonder if I should have warned someone like he said? Too late now. Asteroid’s going to hit dead center of this pier.

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Book Review of “Children of the Lens” by E.E. “Doc” Smith

children

Cover art for “Children of the Lens” by E.E. “Doc” Smith

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Yesterday, I finished Children of the Lens (1954), the last in E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen series.

By rights, it’s a book I should have started and finished over fifty years ago. The works of Smith as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs and others were hugely popular in paperback in the late 1960s. All of my male friends in Junior High were devouring them.

But when everyone else was reading the Lensmen, I was reading The Skylark series, so I missed my opportunity the first time around.

Today, if I have anything to complain about the Lensmen series (or Skylark for that matter), it’s that they’ve aged. With each passing novel, the powers, technology, and scope of the books became larger and grander. I can’t read these stories without also imagining them taking place between the 1930s and 1950s.

Even back in the day, “Children” was criticized for two-dimensional characters and juvenile storyline, but at the same time, it was highly popular with young (and not so young) men and boys as a source of adventures and heroics.

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Zone 7

farm

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

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“The recorder’s on. Go ahead and read what’s on the card.” Mr. Newman had a soft voice and it sounded creepy, not like Dad’s or Grandpa’s.

“My name is José Raymond Phillips. I’m ten years old. My family has been assigned to Zone 7: Jordanville in upstate New York. How am I doing, Mr. Newman?”

“Just fine, but keep to the script. Its just for your records.”

“Okay. Well, anyway…I live in Zone 7 on the Jordanville farm with other families. We are happy here and enjoy the work and the outdoors. My Dad let me drive the tractor for the first…”

“That’s not in the script, José.”

“Sorry, I just got excited.”

“I’m turning off the recorder. Take a few minutes to compose yourself. Then we’ll try again.”

“Why do I have to make this recording?”

“It’s for your official records.”

“You mean like school records?”

Newman chuckled in a way that was scary. “No, not exactly. We just want to show people that you like being in a zone and that you are happy. You’re happy, aren’t you?”

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Inheritors

bishop ring

Artist illustration of a Bishop Ring space habitat. Image Credit: Neil Blevins – 2018

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Cornell Jackson’s hands were shaking as he and Administrator Rosa Mendez were forced at gunpoint to disable the alarms on the secure wing of the Achyuta ring’s top security facility in the spinward end of Rama City.

“I want to see it for myself. You said you had the answer.” Hunter Moran had been a Major in Perumal ring’s defense force, but that was before the biospheres of the first four Bishop’s rings started dying. Now he was a terrorist. No, that wasn’t fair. Cornell felt the same panic as he did, as everyone did. After over a hundred-and-fifty years of developing the five colony rings in orbit around Alpha Mensae, their biospheres started to collapse. Excess carbon dioxide was impossible to purge, food crops were dying, and oceans and lakes on each ring were developing toxic algae growths. In less than a decade, almost all life, especially human life, would go extinct and no one knew why…well, almost.

Moran and his military coalition from the other four rings arrived two weeks ago. They had overridden the automatic meteor guard, landed their shuttles along the rim spaceports, and declared Martial Law on the last viable ring.

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Review of “Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across A Holographic Multiverse” (2017)

bad dog

Cover art for Ashley Pollard’s 2017 book “Bad Dog”

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Yesterday, I finished reading Ashley R. Pollard’s book Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across A Holographic Multiverse. It’s book one in the Gate Walkers series.

I’m acquainted with Pollard on social media including her commenting periodically on this blog. Like so many other people I “know” on social media, I don’t remember how we connected in the first place. I was aware she was a science fiction author, so when I got the chance to buy and download this series onto my Kindle Fire, I jumped at it.

The protagonist is Sgt. Lara Tachikoma, senior NCO leading a group of Marines who go into combat wearing specialized “mech” suits called “Dogs.” The story is set in 2071 so although the Marine culture she operates in is very familiar to me (my son served in the USMC), she works for the Confederated States Marine Corps.

On board the CSN Hornet, the Marine contingent receives orders from CIA operative Anderson to rescue a group of mechanized Army soldiers who were lost in an area of Afghanistan a week ago. Also, if they just happen to encounter a strange magnetic anomaly, to investigate.

Yeah, it’s a setup.

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2023: Reviewing My Year in My Stories

2023

2023 – the year as it was.

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The new year is rapidly approaching and it’s time for me to take you back through my accomplishments of 2023. They are better than last year but not as good as the year before. Oh well.

Let’s start off with my SciFi short story “Fall of the Tower” my first tale of 2023 published in One-Way Ticket: A Science Fiction Anthology by Starry Eyed Press. I’d been trying to get some version of this story published for years and finally hit upon the right presentation.

I took the story’s title from the Biblical tale of the “Tower of Babel” found in Genesis 11:1-9. The story began with that Biblical quote, but the publisher replaced it because they do not want to represent any particular religious viewpoint. So it goes.

This was followed by my short story “The Price” featured in Fantastic Schools, Volume Six and is my second magical schools tale published for Wisecraft Publishing. I’m not a big fantasy or magic school writer, but I’m proud of the magical system and story I crafted here. There’s always a price for using magic and it’s typically blood. Sometimes it is life and even many lives.

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The Times They Are A-Changin’

the ball

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

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Trevor shivered in the cold wind as he made his way up W 45th street toward Times Square.

It had worked. Bobby Kennedy had originally supported his brother’s plan to bomb the Cuban missile sites. Fortunately, Trevor Ross was a historian and a time traveler. He blackmailed Bobby the same way Hoover had. Then something went wrong.

Yes, Kennedy had his secret meetings with the Soviet ambassador. However, what happened between them not only averted 1962’s Cuban missile crisis, but had changed everything when Trevor returned to 1980. How had New York City become the capitol of a Communist America?

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Review of “Shoot the Devil 2: Dark Matter”

ginger

Screenshot from the internet.

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I woke up this morning to find a wonderful review of the Christian SciFi anthology Shoot the Devil 2: Dark Matter by Ginger Nuts of Horror. “Dark Matter” features my short story “The Heavens Shall Declare His Glory.”

Tales by Richard Paolinelli, Frank B. Luke, and L. Jagi Lamplighter received high honors. That said, there was one drawback the reviewer found with the book:

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My SciFi Drabble “Hunter” is Available at “Martian Magazine”

martian

Screenshot of Martian Magazine web page.

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Martian Magazine publishes science fiction drabbles every Monday and Friday. I somehow missed that one of my drabbles was going to be coming out on Monday, November 30th.

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