Paintdrop On The Wall

I recently came across a strange news release in my Facebook feed. (Warning: Gen-X age marker ahead!) Massive Attack, the British Trip-Hop group, is celebrating the twentieth anniversary of their classic album Mezzanine. No surprise: they’re issuing a re-release of the album. Big surprise: it’s on paint.

No, this isn’t an effect of my first post-pot-legalization post. They had the album encoded into DNA, then mixed that DNA into a spray paint. So it’s not just paint, it’s genetically-engineered paint. I don’t know of any technology to read the information in DNA, at least, DNA on a wall. So it could be ordinary black paint for all we know. Or perhaps it really contains “Never Gonna Give You Up” in a truly epic Rickroll.

Of course, I have plenty of reactions to this. First is a scientific amazement at the storage capacity of DNA. Then there’s the amazement at their initiative in doing something so unusual. But then that leads to the question of whether this is the best use of music-paint possibilities. It’s black paint, and Massive Attack’s music does have a darkness to it, but I’d really rather tell people that my black paint has Goth in it. Others would, I assume, prefer “Back in Black,” “Back to Black,” or either Black Album. But really, among music paints, I’m sure Purple Rain Purple would be the biggest seller. You could also have White Album White, and other colours would be mixtures of:

• Simply Red
• Orange Crush
• Coldplay Yellow
• Reverend Al Green
• Joni Mitchell Blue
• Indigo Girls
• Violet Femmes

Just remember to use Primus Primer.

But putting all this aside, there’s the subtext that Massive Attack member Robert “3D” Del Naja is rumoured to be infamous graffiti artist Banksy. So a big graffiti-related announcement from the group was greeted with snickers and knowing winks. To be fair, Del Naja is an admitted graffiti artist that Banksy has acknowledged as an influence, so Massive Attack spray paint is not necessarily an indication of nefarious culture jamming.

Of course, you could argue that once you’re using expensive gratuitous technology like this, we’ve left true rebellion and anarchism behind. And that’s something people have been asking about Banksy lately. His previous caper was the auto-shredding painting. That seemed like a great statement against the monetization of Banksy’s works that so often misses his point. But afterwards there were some questions about just how unexpected it was. For one thing, Sotheby’s usually puts paintings on an easel to auction them, which would have prevented the shredder from working, yet this one was conveniently on a wall at the side of the room.

I guess you could say that it’s subversive to talk a major auction house into risking its reputation by participating in performance art. Similarly, you could argue that conning people into buying expensive graffiti implements is a great satire of the economics of music memorabilia. Particularly if it turns out to be ordinary black paint. But even if it is real, memorializing electronic music with genetically-engineered vandalism is some quality cyberpunk.

The Twenty-First Century's Yesterday

Comic book author Warren Ellis pointed out something interesting. He's looking forward to next year, because it was the year when the original Blade Runner took place. No, it's not because he's saving up for one of those cool florescent light umbrellas. He points out that it is the last thing in science-fiction. We all lived through 2001 without any monoliths, and went right through 2015 without hoverboards. But next year will be our last future year. I would point out that it's not just Blade Runner: Akira also took place that year. That will be -20 geek points, Mr. Ellis.

Of course, it's not really the last sci-fi future: Buck Rogers is still waiting for us in the twenty-fifth century. And all of Star Trek has yet to happen, even Khan conquering a quarter of the world. That was supposed to happen in the 1990's, and he's really taking his time about it. The point is, when it comes to near-future science-fiction stories, the predictions run out after the first couple of decades of the twenty-first century.

That's not too surprising. Back in the twentieth century, 2000 was pretty much what people thought of when they thought of the future. There wasn't much need for a sci-fi author to set a story any further into the future. That would be like saying that the story took place the day after the future. So now those of us who lived in the twentieth century have to get used to the idea that we're living beyond what was once our future.

(As an aside: I referenced the light-up umbrellas in Blade Runner above, even though I was pretty sure that I remembered seeing that someone was actually selling them. So I looked it up, and found that they were available, but are no longer being sold. So that seals the argument that we are now ahead of the future.)

Ellis thinks that this development will be liberating, because there are no longer any expectations handed to society by our fiction. That's good, because it's always been disappointing when we cross one of these future anniversaries. Above, I referred to how 2015 didn't measure up to the future depicted in Back To The Future II. And to me, the big symbol of disappointment in the future was 2001, which represented incredible discovery as a movie, while the real-life year will always be associated with a shocking act of terror that represented humanity at its worst.

So I'll also look forward to not having it occasionally shoved in my face that the world's future is not as good as I was promised. I'll miss the invitations to nostalgia, but in today's world, that's hardly a problem.

Good Whill Hunting

In a recent interview, George Lucas revealed some of his plans for the third Star Wars trilogy, had he been the one to make it. He didn't make it, of course, having sold the franchise to Disney. And after hearing his plans, people are thinking that’s a good thing.

He revealed that the third trilogy would have gone into the microscopic world, looking more in depth at the midi-chlorians that no one liked from The Phantom Menace. He would have introduced another bunch of microbes, the Whills, who really control The Force and the universe.

At this point, I have to say that I’m not entirely sure that Lucas is being honest with us. Part of me believes that either:

1. He’s so tired of people criticizing the prequel trilogy that he’s trolling us by taking what people didn’t like about them and then expanding on that. If we discover that one of the Whills is a whiny teenager having an unconvincing romance with an older Whill royal, then you’ll know I’m right.
2. Like any decent Star Wars fan, he’s alarmed by the bigoted criticism the new trilogy is getting, so he’s running interference by putting out truly bad ideas for how it might have gone. Racist “fans” will be quicker to accept non-white-male stars when they realize that they could have gotten microbe stars.

But assuming that Lucas’ ideas were genuine, this stands as the most extreme example of a principle I heard once about why sci-fi/fantasy franchises often disappoint over time: that the creators probably have different ideas of what the story is about than the fans do. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who said that, but I think it was someone on a Battlestar Galactica after-show. That was another show that deviated from expectations as it went along. It became a convoluted origin story for the human race, rather than the parable of post-9/11 America that attracted many fans.

The midi-chlorians were a good example of this. It struck a false note with fans because:

1. The concept of The Force had seemed like a statement of mind over matter. The idea that great power could come from patience and understanding was an inspiring meek-shall-inherit-the-galaxy idea. The 98-pound weakling could watch the movies to escape from a world where he gets beat up by the school bully. But by introducing the midi-chlorians, it made it seem like just another genetic lottery. Now the 98-pound weakling realizes that in the movies’ universe, he’d just end up getting force-choked by the school bully.
2. Although Star Wars has always played fast and loose with science, at least it avoided using technobable as an cop-out story device, unlike a certain other Sci-Fi franchise.

Supposedly Lucas had the midi-chlorians in mind right from the start, so he perhaps didn't realize that the fans were building up a different mental image of the story's world than he had.

Ironically, another example of this is the aforementioned bigot fan contingent. A variety of incidents have exposed the fact that there are a lot of alt-right crossover in the sci-fi community. That’s a surprise to many, since Star Wars and Star Trek have, in their own way, made morality into a key ingredient. How that could possibly be compatible with tormenting a person for being of a different race is a mystery to most of us. And yet, these folks evidently have a great deal of passion for a franchise, despite not sharing some of its key values.

I guess you could make the argument that we all pick and choose what we want from a media property. After all, a lot of people are fans of Star Wars without being a fan of, you know, wars. We can absorb the story’s themes while glossing over the message that comes from the movies’ action, perhaps because action and violence are so ubiquitous in our media. There’s a similar concept in video games called Ludonarrative Dissonance, which is when the gameplay and the story have different messages, such as a violent game that tries to have a pro-peace moral. And I guess this can be a solution to my long-standing question of why far-right politicians often listen to music with a liberal message. Lefty lyrics often come with aggressive delivery, so you might well absorb one while ignoring the other.

That’s not to say that everyone has a right to get what they want out of our favourite media. We simply can’t all expect to get something out of it when we each see such different things in it. And if your experience is very different from either the creator or the rest of the audience, then you’ll be disappointed.

Mass Romantic

You know how May 4th has become Star Wars day? Well fans of the epic sci-fi video game Mass Effect are trying to do the same thing with November 7th. See, the top level that a soldier can reach in the game's universe is N7, so that code appears on a lot of equipment and clothing in the game. Gettit? N7 : November 7th? Okay, it's even flimsier than the "May the fourth" pun, but it gives me the opportunity to tell you about my insights from playing the game. Now don't worry, non-geeks, this entry will be full of social commentary, not esoteric nerdery.

For non-geeks, it might be hard to explain the game's appeal. After all, you're playing a future soldier defending the galaxy from killer aliens, which is about the dorkiest premise you could imagine. But you know how there comes a point in every child's growth when they realize that "action figures" and "dolls" are really the same thing, and it's your choice how you play with them? Well that's where Mass Effect is, at the border between the two.

In between shooting aliens, you get to talk to, befriend, or argue with your fellow shipmates. And you can even sleep with them - oh, I'm sorry, "romance" them, in the parlance of the game. This human interaction seems to be a big draw for the franchise.

I've gone on Pinterest, where I've found a lot of creative work based on the game: humour, artwork, headcannons, and cartoons extending the series. I've discovered a few things: first, I can read Mass Effect comics all day, and second, that the interpersonal relations between the characters are what fascinates many fans.

And that leads to an interesting aspect: Your character in the game is a "Commander Shepard," but you can choose to make that "John" or "Jane" Shepard. According to research by the game's maker, Bioware, more than 80% of players choose the male version. Yet, a look through The cartoons on Pinterest shows most of them with a female lead. So that tells you something about Pinterest's user base, as well as who the hard core fans are and what they like.

I've played the game through as both genders, which has lead me to an interesting perspective. As a male, I could choose romantic partners based on my real-life preferences. But as a woman, the romantic side of the game offers a challenge. I could have decided she's a lesbian and approach it the same way as I did as a male, but that just seemed like such a cheesy, dorky, guy-thing to do. So I decided to make her straight, and just choose a partner that fit the character, like some interstellar yenta.

This brings up a subtlety of video games: do you regard the character you portray as an embodiment of yourself, or as a separate person that you are guiding through the game, sort of like you do in The Sims? Essentially, I was doing the former as a male, but the latter as a female.

Anyway, in the second game, I was going to match her up with Jacob, the brave but slightly bland soldier. But then while talking with Garrus, the gruff sniper, the game offered me some flirtatious dialog options, and I thought, actually, he makes way more sense with her. So I "romanced" him instead. Matching them together is kind of surprising, since Shepard is human, while Garrus is from a vaguely bird/reptile/insectoid race. So I thought this relationship was a rather bold and open-minded choice.

Until I see the cartoons, and find out that this pairing is what pretty much everyone did. It seems women can't get enough of Garrus. Now that came as a surprise for me. No, not because Garrus is not human (I know enough geek lore to be aware of Kirk/Spock slash fiction.) The reason for my surprise is that usually when media creates a love interest for a female character, I find him unbelievable or transparent (yeah, I'm looking at you, Jess from Gilmore Girls! )

But in this case, I totally get it. There have been a few explanations for this character's popularity, but mine is that he is a new character archetype: the Principled Badass. Usually badass characters wind up being just that: bad and an ass. But Garrus manages to project the "dangerous" image without it seeming fake, or revealing a lack of morals.

In case you're thinking that this game has woken either latent homosexuality or a weird birdman kink, I want to be clear that this is nothing more than a bromance to me; If I were in the game's universe, I'd be happily playing the Archie to Liara and Tali's Betty and Veronica. But the game has given me insight and understanding of female attraction, and all it took was defeating a race of giant, unstoppable robots.

...And Watch Out For The Cybernewts

If you see a Weeping Turtle, don't blink...oh, go ahead and blink, it's not getting very far anyway.

Ripley, Believe It Or Not

So far, here's the reaction I've seen to Doctor Who announcing the first female Doctor:

• 25% people happy about the new casting
• 12% people saying “it’s about time”
• 5% dudebros complaining
• 30% people eagerly anticipating the dudebros complaining
• 20% progressives complaining she isn't also black, Muslim, gay, etc. 
• 5% arguing whether she is now a “Time Lord” or “Time Lady”
• 3% fans trying to correct newcomers ("You call her 'The Doctor,' not  'Doctor Who.'" “Oh,  I get it: it’s only the show that’s called 'Dr. Who’” "No! you have to spell out ‘Doctor!’”)

As you can see, I was pleasantly surprised by how little complaining there was.  Of course, social media is not a representative sample of opinion on anything.  But there are people who were perversely fascinated by especially sexist criticism, and they seemed to be having trouble coming up with particularly extreme examples.  So I’m assuming they didn’t have much to choose from.  Of course, that could be because they’ve been burnt by past campaigns against women in science fiction.

But on the other hand, I’ve been surprised by how many people are acting like this is completely unprecedented. Trekkies are off to the side, waving their arms to get our attention and point out that they did have a female captain for seven years. It’s like when Wonder Woman opened, and people were talking about how this was a new era with a female-led action franchise, there were a number of memes showing Buffy, Xena, and Katniss looking miffed at that. To be clear, I’m not denying that women have been tremendously under-represented as characters in these genres, I’m just curious as to why we keep forgetting the previous steps we’ve taken.

It reminds me of something from the music business. I remember years ago someone pointed out how, at the end of the year, when they’re writing their retrospect stories, they always seem to declare this the Year of the Woman, that this was the year women finally asserted themselves in the music industry because of the success of singer X, singer Y, and Madonna.  And yet, things never seemed to change much, and popular music continued to be male-dominated.

I’d always assumed that was because the music business has women in visible positions, but not powerful positions.  There are lots of women singing songs written by men, being produced and promoted by men, with most of the profits going to men. So we’re constantly overestimating how much real power women have in the industry.

But now I’m not so sure. Maybe we do have a problem with shifting our perspective in response to incremental progress. That’s not too surprising, really, since our ideas about the state of the world are deeply ingrained. And humans are notoriously bad at noticing slow, steady change. So I guess the lesson here is to revisit our assumptions more often.

Boldly Vote

There's an election in Britain today, so remember everyone...

... get out there and vote in Spock as Prime Minister.

Don't You Miss Barack Iguana?

Recently, I saw a discussion of people's favourite science fiction quote. There were some surprises (very little Yoda, but quite a lot of Babylon 5.) Interestingly, several people mentioned the same quote from one of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy books. In it, Ford explains to Arthur why a recently arrived alien has said not "take me to you leader," but rather, "take me to your lizard."

"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in."

That passage is a pretty good example of how the series works: both humour and science fiction work as satire by allowing us to look at our world with a fresh perspective, and The Hitchhiker's Guide uses both at the same time to ridicule the absurdities of the modern world.

As a sci-fi fan who appreciates surreal humour, I love The Hitchhiker's Guide more than life itself. Having said that, the above passage has always bugged me a little.

When it comes to politics, most people are at least a little unhappy with how things are, and have an idea of how things should be. So how do you make the world a better place? You can take a revolutionary approach, where you push for a big change that will make things exactly as you want them. Or you could take the evolutionary approach, and just change the system in little ways to make it more like your ideal, even if it isn't exactly right. The first way certainly has a better outcome, but the disadvantage is that it has longer odds. Essentially, revolution is a long shot to get a perfect world, while evolution is a good chance at a better but still imperfect world.

Of course, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive; even while planning your utopia, you can spare fifteen minutes to go vote for one of the candidates you find unsatisfactory, thus giving you a hedge against your revolution failing, or at least being delayed.

And that leads to one of my supreme frustrations with politics: people who work on one approach but not the other. As you can see, I'm a dreamer with a practical streak, so I tend to focus on the evolutionary approach. I don't begrudge the revolutionaries their existence, but I'm alarmed when they ignore the evolutionary efforts going on around them. As I said, you don't lose anything by throwing a little effort behind practical efforts. Instead, it's emotional motivations that turn the two approaches to political change against one another. Not willing to entertain the possibility that their way isn't the best, they have to convince themselves that the other is useless, if not counter-productive.

So every election we find ourselves pulling teeth, making and remaking the point that even if you believe the candidates are corporate puppets, you don't lose anything by taking a moment to vote for the corporate puppet that will maintain a woman's right to choose, or gut government programs. And that brings us back to the lizard parable. Surely if there is any lesson to come out of last year's Presidential Election, it's that there is a "wrong lizard."

I can understand that things may happen to push people towards either approach to political change. Say, after Barack Obama was elected in a blaze of optimism, but did not deliver as much change as many desired, I could understand that you might go away with the idea that we need more radical change. And I'm sure that in the alternate universe where Bernie Sanders is currently putting together his cabinet, many of his supporters are feeling disillusioned that he isn't going to build a socialist wonderland, and now they're thinking that they just can't win while working within the system.

And yet I find a lot of people are trying to make the case that Trump's presidency shows that all politicians are awful and the system is corrupt. I can't understand how you would get that lesson our of our current circumstances. If you're watching night-and-day changes in politics after an election, that doesn't show that everyone in the system is bad. If anything, it shows that there is great variety among politicians.

It's The History Eraser Button, You Fool!

As a fan of the Stargate franchise, I was delighted to see that new trilogy of Stargate movies probably won't happen.

If you're confused, here's how it happened: Stargate was a 1995 science fiction movie from director Roland Emmerich, a poor man's Michael Bay. It was built around Kurt Russell and the premise that the Egyptian god Ra was an alien enslaving humans. It didn't have a lot going for it other than that, except for some impressive (for the time) visuals and action set-pieces.

A few years later, someone thought it would be a good premise for a TV spinoff. The idea got handed to some new people, and they came up with a complex backstory for all the cool looking stuff in the movie, added and rewrote characters, and injected a lot of humour.

The result was a show that was far superior to its inspiration in every way except special effects. On the list of TV spinoffs that exceeded their movie inspirations, it's a solid number two behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Okay, Westworld has probably pushed it to number three, but you get the picture. It maintained a cult following, and lasted ten seasons, and spun off a further two series.

But in Hollywood's current attitude that absolutely anything with any name recognition must be made and remade as much as possible, Emmerich arranged to restart the movie series. The catch here is that he was going to ignore the TV shows and start over where the original movie left off.

Of course, in today's media landscape, reboots and rewriting are an accepted hazard of fandom. Different franchises have had their own ways of dealing with it:

• Star Trek - we'll start a new timeline, so we can change everything and pretend we're not changing anything. Your beloved characters are safe and sound and unchanged in their own timeline that we're never going to use again.
• Star Wars - we'll drop all the peripheral stuff that only the hard-core fans know about anyway. But the main story from the movies won't change at all. What about the prequels? Well, you know, it's like...look, is that Baba Fett?
• Batman - just accept that each generation the same story gets retold, but darker.
• Doctor Who - People used to think it was silly to have a show that reboots itself every few years, but you're not laughing now, are you?

But in Stargate's case, it seems a little more severe. Rather than change the actors or the tone, this would have rewritten the story, premise, and style. And I know it doesn't really matter; creating a new story with the same name and a superficial resemblance shouldn't take away from my enjoyment of the franchise as it was.

In today's pop-cultural world fandom is part of the experience. It's expected that there's going to be discussion on the Internet, extra stories in other media, and humourous in-jokes with fellow fans for years to come. Really, that's the most troubling thing about reboots and remakes: the idea that your part of the pop-culturesphere is going to be paved over to make way for someone else's experience.

When 40 Years Old You Reach, Look As Good You Will Not

I'll try to take a break from Trump-related articles now. I find myself wondering what one does when their ideals have been defeated and their values expunged from government. And the answer I keep coming up with is, accept exile on Degobah.

So, Star Wars. Are young people actually into Star Wars? Or is it just wishful thinking on the part of advertisers? I keep seeing ads for Star-Wars-related items portraying kids to young to remember the prequels as playing make believe in the franchise's world.

I know some parents my age have introduced their kids to the holy trilogy. So it's probably easy to sell Star Wars toys to those parents. And there seems to be a wide market too; I mentioned Star Wars make up earlier. You can get Star Wars tights and other feminine clothing. I'm assuming the marketing juggernaut isn't slowing down or we'd hear rumours of companies dumping unsold BB8 necklaces in the desert.

The point is, it's kind of ironic that this third generation of Star Wars is a hit with the whole family. When the prequels started up in the late 90's, many of the old fans like myself thought they came off as a little childish. No, this isn't going to be another rant against Jar-Jar. Though, you know, Jar-Jar. But there we're lots of aspects of those movies that were cartoony or dumbed-down.

George Lucas answered criticism like this by pointing out that the original movies were made to appeal to kids, which is why folks like me - who were kids when the original trilogy came out - got into them in the first place. So it wasn't fair for us to begrudge the next generation their own child-oriented movie series.

I could see the logic behind that, except for a couple of things: Realistically, he had to know the audience would be mostly aging fans of the original, whether he likes it or not. And the fact is that young audiences are getting more mature in their media (witness the direction of superhero movies as an example.) In my admittedly subjective opinion, Lucas had gone in the opposite direction, trying to win over modern kids with movies more childish than the ones that won us over in the seventies.

So now the new movies - without Lucas' involvement - have abandoned his strategy. Instead, they're making movies that mostly fit with what the now thirty- to fifty-something original fans were looking for. And yet that ends up appealing to kids better than the prequels did.

Going Back For Thirds

With a contentious election in the US, both parties are trying to get every vote out. And that means the quadrenial effort to explain why you shouldn't vote for a third party. This year they are particularly tempting given the acrimony of the primaries. If you had your heart set on Bernie Sanders, you might be tempted to vote for the Green Party's Jill Stein as an ideological alternative. Similarly, a Republican turned off by Donald Trump's racism or anti-free-trade stances might be looking at the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson.

Fortunately, the third party candidates themselves are doing plenty to encourage voters to go back to the mainstream candidates. Johnson's biggest splash in the whole campaign was his interview embarrassment where it turned out he had never heard of Aleppo, the besieged rebel-held city in Syria. Embarrassing as that was, I have to give him credit for owning his ignorance and saying he would research the topic - most modern American conservatives would have tried turning it into a positive: "of course I haven’t heard of some little town in Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, I’m more interested in what matters to American taxpayers."

As for Stein, she seems to be an amalgam of all the bad attributes of left-wing politicians:

• populist promises that the country can't afford
• promises the president doesn't have the power to implement
• simplistic understanding of economics
• flirting with conspiracy
• citing or ignoring scientific evidence as is convenient.

But as always, the main reason not to vote for them is that they simply can't win. Even if you have solid evidence that one of them is the best of all possible presidents, a vote for them would still be a wasted vote unless you know there’ll be a groundswell of support for them unprecedented in American history. By a nice coincidence, Facebook’s memories feature brought up this cartoon I made eight years ago, for illustrating the concept. Also, tech writer Clay Shirky does a great job of explaining it.

It's a really frustrating topic. It can be depressing when we see just how few people have a passion to make the world a better place. It can also be hard to come to terms with how few people have the skills to apply it. But times like this expose how few people combine the two into effective change. And when I see that it's easy to lose hope.

But now I find out about a new group that has this combination of hearts and minds. I've come across a Facebook group of actors, writers and producers from various incarnations of Star Trek who are campaigning against Donald Trump. And interestingly, they're putting special emphasis on reminding people not to vote for a third-party candidate. Oh Star Trek, however crazy the world gets, you're always there for me. On the other hand, I'm more than a little worried to discover that Star Trek is the lone oasis of humanity in America.

Section Nine So White

You may have been confused by recent news reports saying that people are angry that Scarlett Johansson is not Asian. See, they're making a movie based on the classic manga series/anime movie Ghost In The Shell and she's going to be playing the lead role. But, like most anime, Ghost In The Shell is set in Japan, and about Japanese people. Coming on the heels of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, this whitewashed casting didn't sit well with many people.

I was prepared to write a post about this. I wasn't going to defend the casting, but just to point out that it isn't racism per se, but rather it's America's uneasiness with foreign stuff. (Remember that it was only by JK Rowling's insistance that the Harry Potter movies were actually as British as the books.) I would then claim that in the unlikely event that Canadians made a movie Hollywood deemed worthy of remaking, they would probably insist on re-setting it on their side of the 49th. Then I'd point out that I don't condone this sort of soft-xenophobia, but that it's not as serious a charge as racism.

But now I find out that the upcoming movie hasn't been transplanted to the U.S. It's still set in Japan, with Japanese characters. That is, they're making a movie whose main character is named "Motoko Kusanagi", but we're just supposed to accept that she looks like Scarlett Johansson. Yes, I know, the character is a cyborg, you could easily explain that she has chosen a body that looks caucasian because she felt like it. Aside from not being real true to the character, that's the sort of fake-sounding exposition that jams up the audience's suspension of disbelief. But the fact is, the issue is apparently not making the movie more American, but more white.

To explain the casting, many people have resorted to money. The phrase, "you don't know how the industry works" seems to come up a lot. The idea is that there aren't any famous (in the West) Japanese actresses. First of all, that's hardly an excuse, it's merely a deflection, like my aforementioned planned post. But that line of reasoning has a few problems:

• They originally cast the significantly-less-famous Margot Robbie in the role
• When a movie's main draw is either special effects or a pre-established franchise, Hollywood is okay with a little-known star.
• Most of the major supporting players are white too.

So I really can't buy the explanations. It's expecially bewildering given how global the movie business has become. Hopefully the desire to bring in a world-wide audience will change some attitudes in Hollywood.

What A Fool Believes

A lot of people seem to hate April Fools day. Today I saw many people on social media lamenting its arrival, and the many half-assed jokes they'd be dodging over the next 24 hours. But personally, I enjoy it. True, many of the hoaxes and pranks are bad. But in a world where goofy broad comedy rules, it's nice to have a premise that forces everyone to use a deadpan delivery that we normally don't see outside of The Onion.

But today I realized that there is a modern problem with April Fools. I realized when reading an article about a Japanese Virtual Reality simulation of trying to save a cat on a plank: I couldn't figure out if it was a joke. Yes, it sounds like a joke. But then, we live in a world where there's a game called Goat Simulator. It started out as a joke, but then became quite popular. There's also a game where you play a slice of bread trying to get toasted. That wasn't even a joke. So when products are so light-hearted, how can we even tell which are real?

We already passed the point of Saturday Night Live commercials becoming real products, now April Fools pranks too. The trouble is that it's so easy to make things that we can now make them on a whim.

Surprisingly, for all my musings on the future, I never suspected this. Sure, people have speculated about what would happen if we perfected nanobots, microscopic robots that could do incredible work in their teeming millions. Even if that didn't lead to an apocalypse of nanobots consuming all resources as they endlessly reproduce themselves, giving everyone god-like powers of creation could be devastating. I wouldn't be surprised if some people used the new technology to carve entire mountains into sculptures of their own genitals, but that would just be one aspect of a bigger disaster. What I didn't expect was a long period of time where advanced humans leisurely produce one odd creation after another. But that looks like where we're going.

This is yet another way Star Trek lied to us. Their replicators and holodecks gave the characters incredible powers of creation, yet only ever used them tastefully. Sure, we all speculated about what was in Riker's secret holodeck files, but generally everyone used their powers responsibly. Of course, I can see how unrealistic that is now. If you had the power to make a giant pink rhinoceros when you feel like it, you probably will.

At least this answers one question I have had about the future: if humanity does survive for millennia, what are we going to do with all that time? I mean, once we've cured all the diseases and figured out all of science. I guess we're just going to fill out time doing weird, frivolous stuff. And I guess writing an article about April Fools Day that somehow links to the destiny of the human race is a good start.

I Talk About Geek Fight Club

If you're a geeky person, and you've ever hung out with similarly geeky people, you've likely got in a who-would-win discussion involving iconic characters from science fiction, fantasy, and comics.  You know, could the U.S.S. Enterprise defeat an Imperial Star Destroyer?  Could The Hulk defeat Smaug?  The Borg vs. The Daleks?  Buffy vs. Wolverine?

I went to the University of Waterloo, so I had plenty of opportunity to participate in these arguments discussions.  This was in the nineties, a sparse time for the geekosphere compared to now, so many of these discussions were Deep Space Nine vs. Babylon 5.  Yes, that's Waterloo for you, where people argue in favour of obscure science fiction, rather than obscure bands.

I quickly realized that these hypothetical battles were meaningless, because each world in speculative fiction is built on different premises.  The creators make wild guesses educated speculation about what is possible, and that shapes the capabilities of there characters, rather than any measure of "goodness" of the characters.  So these arguments are really just childish bragging.

Of course, this is inspired by the upcoming Batman Vs. Superman movie.  I'm not really enthusiastic about it.  Partly that's because I'm just not as emotionally invested in the characters as many are. And of course, there's the question of how and why two good guys would fight.  Yes, I know they fought in The Dark Knight Returns, but that had political subtext to it; this just sounds like a big-budget version of one of those late-night geek arguments.  They've even decided to level the playing field by giving Batman a mechanized suit in the style of Iron Man a generic wealthy crime-fighting genius.  So will that let him win?  I don't know, have the writers arbitrarily decided that a near-future exoskeleton is stronger than a genetically-advanced alien?

You Underestimate The Power Of The Gray Side

Something that's always bugged me about the Star Wars movies: Return of the Jedi never gets its due. The rest seem to have their personalities and reputations, for better or worse:

• Star Wars (I, like many, refuse to call it A New Hope) was the first one, the most emotionally satisfying, and really, the best one.
• The Empire Strikes Back is the one movie snobs insist was the best.
• The Phantom Menace was the disappointing one.
• Attack of the Clones was the worst one.
• Revenge of the Sith was the somewhat-redemptive one.
• Time will tell, but The Force Awakens will probably be remembered as the nostalgic one.

But Return of the Jedi is the George Harrison of the series. It pads out the numbers, but we're not really sure what to think about it. It usually just reminds people of Ewoks, for better or worse. Or recycling the blowing-up-the-Death-Star-with-a-fatal-design-flaw premise of the first movie. Or killing thousands of independent contractors.

But I always appreciated the message at the end that violence begets violence, that anger in any direction is all part of The Dark Side. I know many people have ridiculed this concept over the years, but it seemed like a profound insight to me.

(Warning! Severe topic change ahead!)

Take Israel for instance. A few people have pointed out that the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas and Israel's conservative and hawkish Likud party are essentially allies. Likud have positioned themselves as the only ones who can stand up to the terrorists who threaten Israel, and Hamas have positioned themselves as the only ones strong enough to fight for Palestinian interests. So war and violence benefits them both, because they can use it to convince their people that their more aggressive approach is necessary.  And that aggressive approach fuels the next round of revenge that keeps the system self-sustaining.

And now we're seeing the pattern play out again with Donald Trump.  He's peddling a get-tough approach to, well, everything.  But most notable is his most shocking policy, a ban on Muslims entering the country. To no one's surprise, he has started popping up in ISIS recruitment videos., since an American politician demonizing Islam is a good way to convince Muslims that America is out to get them.  Once again, the enemies' behaviour is mutually beneficial.

But the similarity gets clearer when you consider the ISIS statement that they wanted to eliminate the "gray zone," which is the part of the world where there is mixing of cultures.  By that, they mean much of the Western World.  Terror attacks there promote anti-Muslim feelings, and leave Muslims afraid of reprisals against them, and thus discouraging the mixing of religious followers. And sure enough, Trump and his supporters similarly dislike the ambiguous, open, and multicultural world we've created. Their motivations may be different, but both are served by policies of separation and purity.

Okay, there's now no way I can segue from Donald Trump back to Star Wars, other than showing this picture. I guess I should also assure you that despite my respect for the philosophies of the series, I will not be listing my religion as "Jedi" on the next census.  But at a time when many politicians seem to have acquired their aggression at the movies, perhaps it's an improvement to get more positive values there instead.

All Those Moments Will Be Lost In Time...

During the hype for the new Star Wars, there was a tweet passed around that dared you to quote any line of dialog, or name more than one character, from Avatar. Of course, that should be easy, since Avatar is the highest-grossing movie of all time, at least for the next few days. Lots of people couldn't do it, which underlines the weird way pop-culture works.

When I was a kid, I remember going to the movies in 1982, and they had three movies playing. (Three screens! How adorable!) This stuck on my mind because I, unlike most of the world's movie-goers was excited about seeing Tron, while one of the other screens was showing E.T., which was turning out to be far more popular. In my mind's eye, I think the other screen was showing Blade Runner. I could just be imagining that, but according to the release dates, that seems likely.

In retrospect, it's interesting to see how those three movies have taken such different trajectories. E.T. was a huge hit, breaking Star Wars' box office record. It was also a cultural phenomena, getting referenced, spoofed and imitated all over. Yet it faded quickly from the public's memory over the years. The 20th anniversary reissue bombed. And now, at a time when other 80's blockbusters have had amazingly long lives, it gets ignored.

Tron was hugely anticipated, but died at the box office. For a while it was remembered only as the cinematic equivalent of the Edsel. But it maintained a following among us weird kids, and then when we took over the world, we elevated it to cult classic status, and it eventually got an unexpected big budget sequel.

Blade Runner was a disappointment at domestic theatres, but did better in Europe. Then it got rescued by, of all things, the director's cut reissue on video. It's reputation grew, and now it's regularly mentioned as the greatest Science Fiction movie of all time.

And we can see the same sort of things happening with newer movies. Avatar may not be as well remembered, despite its success. On the other hand, the previous James Cameron movie that held the box office record, Titanic, does seem to have maintained space in the hearts and minds of the public, at least if the there-was-room-on-the-lifeboat-for-Jack discussions are anything to go by.

The same thing happens in other media too. When I first noticed it, I called it the "Grand Funk Railroad phenomenon," after the band that broke Beatles' records in the 70's only to be forgotten by the 80's. Or on TV, there was The Cosby Show, which was very popular when it was on the air, but even before its star was revealed as a sexual predator, had faded from the public consciousness.

So what causes this? I've been trying to come up with some commonality to explain the fates of these pop-cultural artifacts, but I can't find it. For any rule about what makes something last, I can come up with a counterexample. Any ideas?

Take The Star Wars Challenge

The world premiere of the new Star Wars movie is tonight, with wider opening this Friday. Are you reading this on your phone while you're in line? If not, then you won't be seeing it until a week from Wednesday.

But is it any good? It seems like people just asked that question, since I suddenly noticed "Will this be a disappointment?" stories appearing today. That's pretty late in the game to be asking that question, especially given the disappointment with the last trilogy. Of course, that brings up the point that it may not matter; even if it is disappointing, movie-goers will probably keep watching the sequels anyway. People are already talking about how the franchise may outlive it's original fans; with large-scale timelines like that, it doesn't really matter if they need to pause the parade of new Star Wars movies for a decade to wash the bad taste out of viewers' mouths. It's sort of reminiscent of the aliens from Contact, where we don't understand their strategy because these beings are thinking much longer term. Ironically, sci-fi franchises have become like sci-fi beings.

It's not necessarily a bad thing that Star Wars may never end, spawning several movie series, TV shows, video games etc. But I would hope that if it's going to go that far, that there would be some competition. The market is big, why not have a competing science fiction world to create a never-ending series of movies, TV and other media? In other words, this Coke needs a Pepsi. Star Trek would be an obvious possibility as the other big sci-fi franchise, that has always been the yin to Star Wars' yang. But I'm not really sure it can reach the same audience numbers. Well, not without making it more like Star Wars.

Perhaps some media conglomerate will try making a Star Wars competitor from scratch. I know that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Or at the very least, a recipe for Go-Bots.  But consider the amount of creation, art, world-building and promotion that goes into a Massively Multiplayer Online game. They're practically building a complete science fiction/fantasy franchise right there, and might be paying the cost of a movie or three to build it. If you're making that investment, and intend to stick with it for years to come, you might as well make some tie-in movies to further cash in.

It's something to think about if you're a media company out there that's not part of the Disney/Lucasfilm empire. And if you need any story ideas, call me, I've got plenty.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, # 28

CoverGirl has a line of Star Wars makeup.

The Force Sleeps In

One of the advantages of being a geek is that you don’t feel your age as harshly. For most people, there is a time when you realize that you are no longer cool. It could be the time you overhear some teenagers talking and realize that you don’t understand anything they’re saying - and worse, you don’t care. Or it could be when you hear a hit song on the radio and don’t recognize it, or you haven't heard of whoever is playing it.

But if you’re a geek, that never happens. Or more precisely, it has always happened. You aren’t embarrassed when you don’t understand teenagers because you didn’t really get them even when you were one, and you didn’t much care what they said then, either. In fact, an ageing geek may even feel younger: By the time you reach adulthood, you’ve spent so much time dealing with mainstream culture that you’re starting to understand it, if only by repetition. Those teenagers may actually seem less alien now, even if you are observing them like an anthropologist.

Lately though, I have been feeling old, even in my geekiness. The problem is, I'm just not excited over the new Star Wars movie. Yes, it looks promising. Yes, I would like to see it. But the fact is, I can wait.

I don't know if it's cynicism after the last trilogy, or if I don't yet trust JJ Abrams and Disney to run the franchise. Maybe it's because I've now spent most of my life with vague promises of more Star Wars eventually.

What's weird is that most of my fellow geeks do seem excited, and very much so. And that enthusiasm is coming from a wide age range. They were stretching the Internet to its limits to see the trailer for the new movie as soon as it came out. But I didn't bother until a week later. Others spent October looking for two ideally-sized pumpkins to make a jack-o-lantern that looks like that little rolling droid; I can't even remember the name of that little rolling droid.

So I feel a bit left out. I don't feel like I fit in with the outcasts any more.  I guess I could consider myself a non-geek.  But I still can't fit in with them.  Or I could just look at it the other way and become a geek-among-geeks, a nerd-squared.  Yes, you can keep your Star Wars; while you're camped out for tickets, I'll be in the sci-fi section of my local independent bookstore.

The Wishful Thinking Is Out There

The question of whether or not aliens exist is an awkward one. On the one hand, some people will answer that question with any number of bizarre answers:

“Yes, I sure hope they exist.”
“Yes, and the Loch Ness Monster too.”
“Of course. Why, my uncle Kenny’s been abducted twice in the last year alone.”

Because of this, many people who are sensible (but not particularly knowledgeable) will answer the question with an emphatic no, congratulating themselves on their sensibility. It seems to make sense: You haven’t seen aliens, and their existence seems to be far beyond anything we’ve actually experienced.

But then you’ll get a different answer from someone who is sensible and more knowledgeable. If we take someone like myself - who saw Cosmos and now thinks he’s an astronomy expert - and ask them if aliens exist, they’ll tell you that they most certainly do. After all, space is really big. So yes, even though life is surely unlikely to arise on any particular planet, there are so many possibilities, that life must exist somewhere out there. And if you ask the follow-up question, where are they (smartass)? They will refer you back to the “space is really big” principle.

But there’s a problem with that space-is-big, many-possibilities argument. See, space is not only big, it’s also old. It’s about four times older than life on earth, or 70,000 times older than modern humans. On the one hand, that fact adds to the lots-of-chances argument: not only are there lots of planets on which life could have arisen, but there’s been plenty of time for life to arise on them too.

The problem is when it begs that follow-up: Where are they? If the universe is so old, then not only must there be lots of alien races out there, but some of them must have been around for a long time. So even though space is big, they’ve had plenty of time to spread out, explore, and build lots of things. Even if we’re assuming that there’s no way to travel faster than the speed of light, and it will take years just to get to the nearest stars, a race could spread throughout our galaxy in, say, a million years. When you look at it that way, it doesn’t make sense that we haven’t seen any evidence of alien civilizations.

That’s called Fermi’s Paradox. We can’t explain why we can’t find any evidence of aliens, but we also can’t explain how there could not be aliens. There's a long list of interesting explanations for the paradox.

Why rehash this? The Kepler Space Telescope has found a star that appears to have thousands of objects orbiting it. That’s not unusual: a newly created star would have that. Over time, the matter surrounding it would accumulate into bigger and bigger chunks which would turn into planets. Anyone observing our sun five billion years ago would have seen the same thing. But this isn’t a new star, it’s “mature,” like ours. So it should only have a few planets orbiting it. No one has seen anything like this, and we aren’t sure what we’re looking at.

So if science can’t explain it, why not try some wild speculation? People have speculated that a really advanced civilization, with tremendous technology and voracious energy requirements, might build a Dyson Sphere. (Named for physicist Freeman Dyson, not the vacuum cleaner guy.) Essentially the idea is to build a shell around the star to collect all its energy, rather than just settle for the tiny little amount that falls on one planet.

In science fiction, this is often depicted as, literally, a big shell, where your people would live on the inside surface of the shell, with the star essentially above them. Yes, that’s right, there was one on a Star Trek episode once. But there’s a bunch of reasons why that probably wouldn’t work. So if an advanced civilization really wanted to make maximum use of their star’s energy, they’d more likely build something closer to what Dyson actually specified: a “swarm” of small structures of planetlets. They would all orbit the star, absorbing as much of its energy as possible.

So even though there’s probably some rational, boring explanation for this unusual star system, it does seem to resemble what we imagine a Dyson Sphere would look like. And it would provide an answer to Fermi’s Paradox, since this is the sort of thing we would expect to see, given how many really old, presumably advanced civilizations should be out there.

So please allow me to have my moment believing that this really is the sign of intelligent life we’ve always been looking for. Lots of people believe in things just because they want them to be true, and unlike them, at least I’m not voting based on it. And we could all use some good news: just when I was researching this, I found that most astrophysicists on social media were instead complaining about an astronomer given a slap on the wrist for serial sexual harassment. So let’s believe the aliens are there, and we have something better to aspire to.