Clik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Tron: Legacy
It’s not often a science fiction storyteller creates a new world for his story. Most tales in the genre, like Neuromancer or 2001, are set in our world a few years or decades in the future. Some,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BOOK AND ARTICLE REVIEW | The Oft-Ignored Mr. Turton in E.M. Forster’s A...
A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster [trade paperback]; also made into an award-winning film. Perhaps the most important task of all would be to undertake studies in contemporary alternatives to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Francis Ford Coppola, Copyfighter
In an interview with The 99% — Francis Ford Coppola: On Risk, Money, Craft & Collaboration — Coppola offers some very insightful and sensible remarks about creativity, copyright, the role of...
View ArticleNEWS ROUNDUP | D&D on Community, Anti-AI-Marriage Luddites, Atlas Shrugged...
The tv series Community recently had a funny episode devoted to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I started roleplaying when I was 12 with AD&D, roleplayed with a variety of games well into...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Alien
Could I overpraise the sci-fi horror sensation Alien if I wanted to? I look through my thesaurus and see words like magnificent, brilliant, exalted, superior, remarkable, exceptional and outstanding...
View ArticleNEWS ROUNDUP | The Last Ringbearer, Analog Magazine eSubmissions, More Atlas...
Lots of news to catch up on with this post. Over a decade ago, a Russian paleontologist wrote an alternative take on the War of the Ring from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Recently...
View ArticleBREAKING NEWS |“Defense” Secretary Gates Rediscovers Most Famous Classic Blunder
With great solemnity, “Defense” Secretary Robert Gates imparted on West Point cadets this Friday a hard-earned pearl of newly discovered wisdom: “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Aliens
This time, it’s war. It is possible, however unlikely, that I could shuffle a deck of cards, lay them face down on a table and, in dealing to you the top five, deliver a royal flush. If I dealt to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | The Adjustment Bureau
Some years ago I bought the first book of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, made it to approximately page 40 and tossed it aside. The writing was unimpressive, but not so bad that I would have...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Battle: Los Angeles
Aaron Eckhart plays SSgt. Michael Nantz One way to determine just how predisposed one is to sci-fi is by comparing one’s opinion of Battle: Los Angeles with one’s opinion of Black Hawk Down. This...
View ArticleNEWS ROUNDUP | Truth Can Be Stranger Than Fiction
From io9 comes this story of a supermodel brainwashed to work for the CIA: In the movie Salt, Angelina Jolie plays a double-agent who is mind-controlled by scary remnants of the USSR secret service....
View ArticleNEWS | Dystopia Week on Tor.com
If you enjoy dystopian fiction, and dystopias often provide great fodder for libertarians, be sure to keep an eye on Tor.com this week. From the announcement: “It was a bright cold day in April, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Atlas Shrugged: Part I
In Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, the first time we meet Dagny Taggart is on the Taggart Comet. The scene comes alive as Rand’s pen reveals the details such that the reader feels as if he is there....
View ArticleINTERVIEW | Jennifer Burns on Ayn Rand and the Classical Liberal Tradition
With the recent release of the first part of the film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged (see Matthew’s review), the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) — via LearnLiberty.org — brings us this interview with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Contagion
Steven Soderbergh Steven Soderbergh directs a cast full of A-list Hollywood celebrities in the recently released Contagion. Playing into fears that to some extent are natural, while at the same time...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | In Time
Before I studied Austrian Economics and profited from the clarity it brings to phenomena that otherwise seem chaotic and unfathomable, I read an article by Dave Barry that made me laugh. In it, he...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | The Thing
The Thing, a remake of a remake of a solid sci-fi/horror film directed by, despite what the credits may tell you, Howard Hawks, is being projected onto silver screens in dollar theaters across the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Being There and Limitless: Is Power Stupid or Smart?
If you seek power over others, how much of an advantage does raw intelligence gain you? If you look at the makeup of the US Congress — which now has a 9% percent approval rating — or if you watch the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | J. Edgar: Power, Both Pathetic and Terrifying
J. Edgar, the new film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is making the news for dealing frankly with the decades old rumors concerning Hoover’s private life. But that’s not...
View ArticleClik here to view.
INTERVIEW | J. Neil Schulman, Prometheus Award–Winning Author of Alongside Night
AM: Right off the bat, it strikes me that I don’t know what to call you. Will Neil work? JNS: Sure. It’s J. Neil Schulman in credits, and Neil in person. AM: Anyway, thank you for doing this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | The Grey
When an airplane bound for Anchorage, having departed from a remote oil refinery, crashes into a frigid Alaskan mountain removed from any sign of civilization, the handful of survivors must band...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NEWS ROUNDUP | Atlas Shrugged iPad App Wins Publishing Innovation Award,...
The Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged book app for iPad has been awarded the App Fiction prize in the 2012 Publishing Innovation Awards. The award was handed out at the recent Digital Book World Conference....
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | John Carter
There is a certain charm to the recently released John Carter, helmed by Andrew Stanton. The two leads, Taylor Kitsch’s John Carter and Lynn Collins’s Dejah Thoris, have enough chemistry to draw the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
STAFF PICKS | Sword & Sorcery Podcasts on SF Signal
If you like your fantasy gritty, violent, personal, and character-driven, featuring flawed antiheroes, then you’ll want to listen to these two fascinating three-part series of podcast episodes on SF...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BOOK AND MOVIE REVIEW | The Lorax: Allegory on IP
Anyone who read Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax as a kid might dread the movie version. No one really needs another moralizing, hectoring lecture from environmentalists on the need to save the trees from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NEWS | James Cameron on the Piss Poor State of Ocean Exploration
io9 has the story about Cameron’s complaint and his endeavor to spearhead a return to “Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in all the world’s oceans.” I just want to highlight a pleasantly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ARTICLE | How Hunger Games Benefited From Online Piracy
So you want to see Hunger Games when it comes out on Thursday at midnight? It’s not likely that you will get the chance. Tickets in my community have been sold out for weeks. In fact, the first 10...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ARTICLE | Democracy Is Our Hunger Game
Whatever good you have heard about The Hunger Games, the reality is more spectacular. Not only is this the literary phenom of our time, but the movie that created near pandemonium for a week from its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | The Hunger Games
The latest craze to seize the literary world has been transformed, according to the law of Hollywood, into cinema. The Hunger Games, based on the novel by Suzanne Collins, is helmed by Gary Ross and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NEWS | On the Set of Atlas Shrugged, Part II — Either-Or
Brian Doherty of Reason.com was able to visit the set of Atlas Shrugged, Part II — Either-Or, based on Ayn Rand’s inspiring novel, during part of its ongoing 31 day shoot. After poor box office sales...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | The Cabin in the Woods
The Cabin in the Woods is a supernatural genre-bender penned by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard. It is a bizarre story that grows odder as it goes, but there is a focus on character, a decent atmosphere,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | The Avengers
After a series of movies about individual superheroes, movies that gave us their origin stories, we have finally been treated to the culmination of the last few years and so many millions of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Prometheus
One cannot help but notice that, cinematically speaking, director Ridley Scott’s best days seem to be behind him. They were glorious days, though short lived; nothing after Blade Runner could compare...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NEWS | Joss Whedon Goes on Anti-Capitalist Rant at Comic-Con
Joss Whedon at Comic-Con 2012 So disappointing:1 “We are watching capitalism destroy itself right now,” [Whedon] told the audience. He added that America is “turning into Tsarist Russia” and that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | The Dark Knight Rises
Mild Spoilers Hans Zimmer has composed an unrelenting score that is being blasted in movie theaters across the world right now. It is not bad music by any means, but why it is launched like an assault...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NEWS ROUNDUP | Fan Fiction vs. Copyright, Atlas Shrugged II Behind the...
Reason.com has had some interesting posts recently. One is on the subject of fan fiction vs. copyright. Does fan fiction count as a copyright violation? What should authors think or do about it? My...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW ARTICLE | The Ghastly Realism of The Dark Knight Rises
Before the third of the Batman trilogy hit theaters, I had heard that The Dark Knight Rises was a film without hope, with a long and dreary narrative that never loosens its grip. It leaves the viewer...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Total Recall
Another movie joins the list of remakes that have, of late, come pouring out of Hollywood. Total Recall has been reimagined for the CGI era, much changed now but sharing just enough plot and details...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NEWS | Alongside Night Movie Adaptation Event on the Laissez Faire Books Blog
On September 10th at 8 PM EST, Laissez Faire Books will be hosting what I assume is going to be a Q&A-type event on their blog. Wendy McElroy posted the announcement and will be moderating the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | DREDD 3D
The Hollywood Movie Factory has turned out another flick, helping to satiate the demand for competent but uninspired action vehicles conveniently forgettable enough not to take up valuable cerebral...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Looper
Logic is never kind to a story about time travel. It seems that no matter what idea or aspect of so-called fourth dimensional travel a storyteller wishes to pursue, something does not work right —...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NEWS | Author Chat with J. Neil Schulman & Official Alongside Night Movie...
The date has been set for our live author chat with J. Neil Schulman, whose Prometheus Hall of Fame Award–winning novel Alongside Night is being adapted into a film starring Kevin Sorbo (Hercules,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
A director returns, after several years and more than one lackluster attempt with other kinds of movies, to a genre he redefined. He had some little known but modestly successful works before his big...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Blade Runner
There are many elements of science fiction that find their way into stories that are not science fiction. Many times, enthusiasts of the genre will try to claim these works as part of the family....
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Cloud Atlas
Cloud Atlas, a movie based on the novel of the same name, is a bundle of stories with interconnecting threads meant to form a greater pattern, a message to the viewer. We are all in this together, we...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Side Effects
Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, Side Effects, uses the modern themes of high finance and psychiatry to fashion a plot that grows increasingly riveting as the story unfolds. The script features some...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Oz the Great and Powerful
It seems that every classic is to have an entourage. The loneliness of such films as Alien, Star Wars, and King Kong is too much to bear for the hearts of movie execs, so companions are made for them....
View ArticleClik here to view.
PUP002 | Libertarian Speculative Fiction
In episode two of the Prometheus Unbound Podcast, Matthew and I (Geoffrey) discuss libertarian speculative fiction and introduce the Book of the Month, Today’s Tomorrows Writing Prompt, and Fiction...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Oblivion
The other day I found myself watching a soccer game. The players were not very good: defenders were constantly out of position, midfielders of the same team were bunching together and stealing the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOVIE REVIEW | Warm Bodies
Warm Bodies, based on a novel by Isaac Marion that I haven’t read, is a modern take on Romeo and Juliet, only this time Juliet meets and falls in love with Romeo after he’s already dead. It is a tale...
View Article
