More DVD's

Aaaargh! The old person took an extended nap, so I thought I would watch Solaris. While I finally got the point with Blade Runner, Solaris is just awful. The movie isn't really all that SF, other than the main plot is based on a space station orbiting a thing (one gathers a star, although even that isn't stated). There are flash backs to the guy's life on earth, and after a while you realise he has become one of the entities. But the entities remain anonymous. So you are left wondering - are these aliens or are they the sub atomic particles left over from a previous life and Solaris is where they spend "eternity". I guess maybe that is the point of the movie, you don't know.

This is also the premise behind Peter Hamilton's trilogy. Although it is explained by him how the entities came to be, even who they were prior to death. But speculation about death in this manner (both Solaris and Hamiltons works) is not really useful SF. It crosses over into religion and becomes a bit pontificating, whether this is intentional or not.

So these SF writers postulate death. They feel that the subatomic remains after death go somewhere (neither being the religious concept of Heaven or Hell). They don't necessarily get reincarnated, but the potential is there for them to do so. Afterall they are just hovering, in, I guess, some sort of limbo waiting. That is even more pointless than atheism's death is the end of life and there is nothing more.

It seems to me to be a sort of grasping at straws. The rejection of the atheist version of death, but also the rejection of the religious "afterlife/reincarnation" as well. They try to postulate another way through but at a more earthly body human type way. Undead and zombies.

Another genre is related to this, and it is vampirism and undead/zombies. Although they appear more to be fantasy stories rather than speculative Science Fiction. I don't mind a good vampire movie.

I watched Blade, a vampire movie, which both my grandsons had seen before and insisted on watching again with me. At the gory bits, I tend to look away. But my younger grandson said "Granma, you have to watch this bit, it is so cool..." so I did. One character took a huge sword and slashed the other character in half with it. The top of the slain character jumps up into the air and all blood rushed from his body. It was disgusting. But my grandsons insisted it was the coolest scene in the whole movie. They left after that. Goodness only knows what sort of psychological damage that sort of thing does to wee boys, but for those two, it is just cool. They do insist that I don't take it so seriously (the blood thing) - "it is only a movie, Granma".

seriously ....