Annihilation

Based on Jeff VanderMeer’s best-selling Southern Reach Trilogy. I read the first book in the trilogy and found it… disturbing. Didn’t feel a pull to read the other two. The film is directed by Alex Garland who did Ex Machina, 28 Days Later, two films I enjoyed very much (if one can claim to enjoy 28 Days Later).

Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash coming to Amazon Prime

“Snow Crash will be a one-hour drama. A product of the early 1990s, it’s set in a failed state that used to be America, where the corporations run everything. It too has a vast artificial location, but this time it’s the Metaverse, Stephenson’s extrapolation of a VR-enabled Internet. Hiro Protagonist—an on-the-nose name if ever there was—is a hacker and pizza delivery driver for the Mafia who comes into possession of dangerous file, Snow Crash, which sends him on a rabbit chase.”

Amazon commissions three new sci-fi shows: Lazarus, Snow Crash, and Ringworld

The Vietnam War


Watched the first episode (of 10) of The Vietnam War, a film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick. It clearly showed how world events and U.S. politics resulted in our involvement and how badly we fucked things up. I kept thinking, “Why don’t I know this?” But it was current events or much of my early life and filtered through the media propaganda machine. I don’t expect to fully understand any important event until Ken Burns and his collaborators have time to make a documentary.