Blade Runner 1982 and the Sublime | Science Fiction Movies

"It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?" - Gaff

I'm going to examine themes of birth and death in Blade Runner (1982) as they relate to the sublime. These themes are shared with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Indeed, you can view Blade Runner as a meditation on Frankenstein. Shelley was preoccupied with the sublime, a sometimes physical, sometimes metaphysical representation of the limitations of mankind. 

Walter Jon Williams - Implied Spaces | Science Fiction Book Review

Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams is sword and singularity rather than sword and sorcery, and it will blow your mind. The first forty pages or so might as well be one of Robert E. Howard's Conan books. Like Conan, Aristide fights as no one else can fight, only says what's necessary, and beds all comers. Williams is a prose stylist, so it actually reads better than Robert E. Howard, who was given to writing purple prose every now and then.

Top 100 Sci Fi Books List

Ranking Criteria

This list presents what I consider the best sci-fi books of all time. The criteria for making it on this list includes the following:

How influential is this book?
Is the book fun to read?
Does the book deal with an important theme or concept?

That is to say, these are the best SF reads I enjoyed the most and that I think others should read given their importance, commentary on society and technology, and enjoyability. In short, I'm following Horace's maxim that literature should instruct and delight.

One might argue that some of the books on here are not sci-fi, including my #13 pick, Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. But here is why I disagree. Pynchon writes about shifting identities as a result of social, political, and economic realities. Ursula K. Le Guin calls this kind of science fiction social science fiction. Social science fiction is tantamount to speculative fiction. In my opinion, science fiction focusing on social commentary is the most fun to read and the most rewarding.

Terran Tomorrow: Environmentalism, Evolution, and Othering

Books received

Terran Tomorrow (2018). Nancy Kress. Tor.

Terran Tomorrow is the last book in Nancy Kress’s trilogy Yesterday’s Kin. It follows the return of the aptly-named worlder ship Return to earth where things aren’t so great. An extremist group, the Gaiasts, see no future for the earth while mankind still lives, so they release the mother of all viruses into sparrows, effectively killing 96% of the human population. A saving grace for humans, a few futuristic domes exist here and there with airlocks to keep out the virus. One such set of domes, Monterey Base, supports a mix of scientific and military communities. The scientists in Monterey Base research genetic hacks for getting rid of the death-dealing virus. The military keeps the scientists safe from New America, a well-organized revolutionary outfit at war with what’s left of the United States. Things go from bad to worse when the aliens—humans, really--from Return infect a dome with a virophage that initiates the next evolutionary leap forward for the human race.

Sci-fi Noir: The Terminator and Tech Noir | 10 Updates to Film Noir

Once you’ve watched The Terminator, you’ll forever associate masculinity with Reese, a guy that built bombs for fun as a kid and selflessly puts his life in danger to save Sarah Connor, putting himself between her and the sightlines of a coldly intelligent, red-LED-eyed cyborg that walks through flames in the hunt for its quarry. You’ll feel much more worried at reports of robotic systems learning to backflip and drones getting loaded with killer AI. You’ll appreciate Arnold Schwarzenegger’s oft-quoted “I’ll be back.” You’ll want to know more about Harlan Ellison, a science fiction writer whose ideas were stolen for the movie’s plot.