Big boobs
December 4, 2007As I do every year on my birthday, I buy myself a gift, something I’d normally never buy. This Saturday, I bought the Alien Quadrilogy. I’ve seen all the Alien films like ten million times, but I really wanted them in my collection.
Best sci-fi ever - in fact, the only sci-fi that actually makes sense. Crap like Star Trek is completely unrealistic and out-of-this world. And no, then I’m not talking about the technology, but about this so-called utopian Federation system and economy. I mean, seriously, we can’t even accept people of different colours, but you expect people to accept and live together peacefully with a bunch of aliens? Who all look like humans? Star Trek is fun as long as you shut off your brain for all the nonsense that you hear every 1.2 seconds. “Reroute power to the main deflector crystal, and pump anti-matter into the secondary array dish disruptor, that ought to get our coffee machine working again.”
Alien shows us what the future in space will really be like: an industrialised, fcuked up, desolate place with nowhere to go and little to see. No sexy aliens, no civilization on every planet. Space travelers aren’t logical heroes, with restraint and slick hair and big boobs; no, they are employees, factory workers, bored out of their assess with low payment, in dirty spaceships that barely work.
That is the future.
Film | 
Yes, Thom, that is the future. Which is why Star Trek exists and has inspired generations. Because people also like to dream. If all there is going to be is an Alien-type future, we might as well put a gun to our head and be done with it.
Comment by Eugenia — December 4, 2007 @ 10:27 pm
I’m not really into dreaming. Dreaming and idealising lead to deception, which only hurt.
Realism is what matters.
Comment by Administrator — December 4, 2007 @ 10:42 pm
I don’t agree. Please need hope, it’s part of who we are. This is why religions are so popular.
Comment by Eugenia — December 4, 2007 @ 10:52 pm
s/please/people
Comment by Eugenia — December 4, 2007 @ 11:12 pm
Assuming we even advance that far, I think it is a far more likely scenario than anything portrayed in Star Trek. The thing that hooked me on Star Trek, more than anything else, was that everyone thought and acted in a rational manner, bar the occasional slip-up. I see it for what it is though, a pipe-dream. Human civilization will always consist of the irrational, insane masses, controlled by those who have broken away from the herd.
I think what Eugenia says is true as a general rule. And I think people who need delusions to make their life at all tolerable should seriously contemplate whether or not their continued existence is the optimal preference. Obviously when I say something like that I’m not talking about hoping for a better future, etc. But extreme delusion in the face of absolute misery. Like a Starving person in Africa with AIDS, whose only reason for continued existence is the Church, or whatever.
Comment by Andrew — December 5, 2007 @ 1:49 pm
YES! Finally someone else who thinks Star Trek, while entertaining, is rather silly and over-rated.
Comment by Lars Hansson — December 5, 2007 @ 4:07 pm
I’ve always wondered why, if the future is so advanced, people cannot even produce clothes that fit and don’t need to be pulled straight in every scene ;-)
It’s like “one size fits all” on steroids…
Comment by RandomGuy — December 5, 2007 @ 5:51 pm
No one knows what the future holds. It may likely bear no resemblance to the products of our imagination. It’s entirely conceivable that humans will never venture out of the solar system, burning through all of its easy sources of energy long-before developing a means of seeding the stars. Slowly regressing back into isolationism, slavery, and so on. No dank space ships on that side of Jules Verne.
Partly because of our economic organization, fiction exists firstly to entertain and secondly to convey social messages. Science is only an incidental aspect of Star Trek–a means of explaining the liberation of humans from Earth, and even the arrow of time. The ulterior motive is to assess contemporary social issues freed from their Earthly context by metaphor so that their value can be assessed abstractly. That is why Star Trek was as popular as it was; typical people have about as much interest in science as they do the scientists that progress it.
People have great interest in ideals, because they are simple, feel good, and give order to the world. It’s the secret sauce of political parties, political systems, religions, social movements, and everything else that purports to answer the questions of how to make the future better without actually doing it.
There can be a lot of entertainment and even positive social messages in assuming a dystopia and arguing against it by appealing to sentimentality. Amusingly I think this can fail to convey the intended social messages, since I am convinced that the Internet’s Tucker Max would find comfort in the confines of Huxley’s A Brave New World. The same is true of assuming a utopia and arguing for it. I dare say that it would not be difficult to find a religious conservative from the U.S. that would be disgusted by the godless socialist multicultural lovefest of the future.
In any event I find the Alien franchise to be a mindless and boring and that its principle value is H.R. Giger. Opinions are like assholes and all that. There are a handful of episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation that I liked, and I could name them if you cared (and I doubt that you do, so I won’t do the leg work of finding them unless it’s necessary) but I don’t have a lot of love for Star Trek either. Science fiction as it was practiced in the 20th century was masturbatory for the most part. It either consisted of interesting worlds with terrible writing (Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov), space opera (Star Wars, Dune, Star Trek, Farscape), or the product of neo-Luddites (Ellison) that wanted us to fear scientific developments (which I suppose we can blame Shelley for starting).
Comment by Elijah White — December 5, 2007 @ 9:29 pm
Does anyone have a hard time believing Capt. Picard is human enough that he requires the occasional washroom trip?
Comment by Andrew — December 5, 2007 @ 11:53 pm
i personally think that even alien is too optimistic and we will never travel from a star to another, don’t know if it is possible or not, but our society (and the life on earth at a whole if the actual trend continues) will collapse long before we find a way to do it
said that give me back star trek, because hoping the future could be not shitty could help to make at least not too shitty
if the future will be governed by the 3vil megacorporation it’s better no future at all
Comment by thing — December 7, 2007 @ 10:07 am