Absurdism corner

[rygD]

What is scarier than "Snakes on a Plane"?

A gremlin on the wing of the plane. You keep trying to tell people about it, and they think you are crazy, including your wife, due to your recent mental condition. You decide to save the plane by stealing someone's handgun to shoot the gremlin by popping open the emergency exit. Although successful, everyone still assumes you are crazy because they never saw the gremlin, so you are taken away in a straitjacket, possibly to live in a padded room.

Being on a plane that is transporting a huge antique box across the ocean. After landing, everyone on the plane appears dead, but are found to actually be infected with some parasitic worms that are squirming around inside them (seen under their skin using a black light thingy). Also being in the city where the plane lands.

Being on a plane that is hijacked to steal an ancient artifact that contains a death god that can possess humans and kill everyone, and that is also able to be transported via radio to air traffic controllers.

Being on a plane that somehow slips through time, which you notice as you see dinosaurs after losing radio contact. Upon the pilot(s) trying to get back to the present they get closer but are still decades in the past.

Waking on your overnight flight across the continent to find that most people are missing. In addition to the personal items of the missing people being left, you find inorganic items that were inside the missing people. Upon landing you find no one, again. Everything seems to have pretty much stopped, including sound and fire, yet while on the plane things seem to work normally. While trying to leave to get out of this absence of time by flying away, some creatures arrive and start consuming everything, including the ground.

Feel free to add some that I missed. Also, if you want, try to identify those series/episodes and movies, but answer in a spoiler to avoid ruining things for others...perhaps I have already done that, though. I don't know how to fix it. Sorry, science fiction and horror fans that haven't seen these yet.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

I only recognize this one

Being on a plane that is transporting a huge antique box across the ocean. After landing, everyone on the plane appears dead, but are found to actually be infected with some parasitic worms that are squirming around inside them (seen under their skin using a black light thingy). Also being in the city where the plane lands.

Spoiler

The Strain

 

[vcoleiro1]

I didn't know the one Djoga'Ro pointed out, or the "ancient artifact" one, I did find them though . Mark Hamill huh, hmm

I did know , and had the seen the rest.

 

[FBnil]

science fiction and horror fans

... love Dick. Seriously (ask his 5 wife's). This guy started the SCI-FI genre...

Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty,[7] eleven popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, The Adjustment Bureau and Impostor.

Read more about him at wikipedia: Philip Kindred Dick

So even though iconic... he had no male fans... because... hey... no homo, man!

I am reading some of his work that fell into Public Domain, available here:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Philip_Kindred_Dick
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Philip+K+Dick

(ps: Pandora users just use MGutenberg)

Another author I like is Edgar Rice Burroughs he made stuff like Tarzan and John Carter of Mars (and the books are much much much better than the movie!)

Of course, I don't read, that's for plebs that do not know Bard can read it to you. However, Bard requires some initial adjustments, like lowering the volume so audio does not sound distorted. And set the talking speed higher. Once you get used to the synthetic voice, its pretty good. (it takes a while)

 

[rygD]

@Djoga'Ro, yes. I thought that one was going to go in a different direction than it did. I like that it is a bit of a return to classic horror, yet it has a modern twist, and a nod hear and there to Lovecraft.

@vcoleiro1, I was not aware of the Twilight Zone inspiration for the ancient artifact one, which I didn't watch all the way through (I turn it on for background noise).

@FBnil, I am a fan of PKD, and I like the movies inspired by his stories. He used science fiction touches to tell the stories of what he saw and experienced, not entirely unlike other works that could have a few surface changes made and fit just fine into another genre. His stories are about people.

I haven't read any Burroughs, but I appreciate his contributions. There are so many great stories out there, with new ones all the time, that I doubt I will ever get through everything I want to read, study, and compare. With some of those I must read it myself, and make notes and reference other stories and resources. The Lovecraft Circle is particularly ripe for analysis.

 

[Klumpen]

... love Dick. Seriously (ask his 5 wife's). This guy started the SCI-FI genre...

Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty,[7] eleven popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, The Adjustment Bureau and Impostor.

Read more about him at wikipedia: Philip Kindred Dick

So even though iconic... he had no male fans... because... hey... no homo, man!

I am reading some of his work that fell into Public Domain, available here:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Philip_Kindred_Dick
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Philip+K+Dick

(ps: Pandora users just use MGutenberg)

Another author I like is Edgar Rice Burroughs he made stuff like Tarzan and John Carter of Mars (and the books are much much much better than the movie!)

Of course, I don't read, that's for plebs that do not know Bard can read it to you. However, Bard requires some initial adjustments, like lowering the volume so audio does not sound distorted. And set the talking speed higher. Once you get used to the synthetic voice, its pretty good. (it takes a while)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by PKD is one of my favourite books ever alongside Dark Side of the Sun by Terry Pratchett which is another great Sci-Fi book and needs to be read more.

 

[levi]

... love Dick. Seriously (ask his 5 wife's). This guy started the SCI-FI genre...

Heinlein, Wyndham, Asimov and Clarke might have something to say about that!

 

[rygD]

I figured sci-fi was being used distinctively from science fiction, which existed prior to those authors. If you were also trying to separate them, I have to say I disagree with a couple on your list.

 

[levi]

Dick is certainly a particular highlight of the genre as a whole, but I can't say he's more different from the norm than, say, Asimov. I think it's all just different people's take on much the same stuff, and don't see much different between science fiction and sci-fi unless you first define what you mean by those terms - I don't have a default definition. That was just a list of sci-fi authors who are still worth reading today (some more than others IMO) who first published before Dick.

 

[rygD]

I don't participate in the sci-fi vs. science fiction debate (I call it all science fiction, just as some people call it all sci-fi). I think the definition of sci-fi in that context is something like "a watered down trashy version of science fiction that uses some of the ideas and imagery, but doesn't make you think". I believe the term was first used in the 50s, so I am guessing the old B movies from then would be an example. Dick would be science fiction, not sci-fi, there. There are probably other interpretations of it. I wouldn't be surprised if hard vs soft science fiction was one of those, which might put Dick in the sci-fi grouping. Either way, some of the movies based on his stories would be sci-fi under the first definition.

Anyway, what I was getting at is that Asimov and Clarke would not be sci-fi in my understanding of the distinction. Although I still haven't read anything by Heinlein, I am pretty sure he wouldn't either. If we are talking about who created the genre as we think of it today, I would like to direct your attention to Mary Shelley.

 

[levi]

Good point about Shelley - though I've only had a quick bash at Frankenstein so far. Heinlein's stuff is perhaps the most trashy, though that's perhaps unfair - he does talk a lot about stuff that we now know to be impossible, whereas Asimov and Clarke set their stuff so far out in the future that it all seems plausible still, if a little far-fetched at times.

I can see that some authors are more serious/dry and others are more fun/trashy, but I've enjoyed different books for different reasons, and have not found one type to be inherently better than the other. I see it as more of a continuum than a divide too, so I don't find using different terms that helpful.

 

[rygD]

Speaking of fun and trashy, I like your 790 pic. Gotta give Stan some love, too (or not, since no one ever does).

 

[Klumpen]

I think the definition of sci-fi in that context is something like "a watered down trashy version of science fiction that uses some of the ideas and imagery, but doesn't make you think".

I've never heard about a distinction between sci-fi and science fiction, I thought one is just the short form of the same term. oO
So "Star Wars" is sci-fi and "Star Trek" is science fiction?

 

[Neelix]

I've never heard about a distinction between sci-fi and science fiction, I thought one is just the short form of the same term. oO
So "Star Wars" is sci-fi and "Star Trek" is science fiction?

There isn't any. Consider what thread this discussion is in.

-Neelix

 

[Klumpen]

There isn't any. Consider what thread this discussion is in.

-Neelix

The whole human world is an absurdism corner to me.

 

[Klumpen]

 

[rygD]

I've never heard about a distinction between sci-fi and science fiction, I thought one is just the short form of the same term. oO
So "Star Wars" is sci-fi and "Star Trek" is science fiction?

I think both are considered sci-fi by those that make a distinction. It is a debate that has been going on for many decades, and many authors and others have been involved.

There isn't any. Consider what thread this discussion is in.

-Neelix

There is, by those that value the purity of science fiction novels vs. the "ooh-ahh" mindlessness that is sci-fi tv/movies.

The whole human world is an absurdism corner to me.

And while it won't get any less absurd without them, at least there will be less large scale extinction and destruction.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

I've never heard about a distinction between sci-fi and science fiction, I thought one is just the short form of the same term. oO
So "Star Wars" is sci-fi and "Star Trek" is science fiction?

Star Wars is unmistakably Fantasy.

And while it won't get any less absurd without them, at least there will be less large scale extinction and destruction.

It can be done without us, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_level_event.

 

[Klumpen]

Regarding science/magic/fantasy, Clarke got it right:

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Star Wars is unmistakably Fantasy.

It's a fairy tale from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

 

[rygD]

Star Wars is unmistakably Fantasy.

I said this in another conversation with @Klumpen, and it deserves being mentioned here, I think. I don't think science fantasy really matters in their classification, and if it does I am pretty sure it will be called sci-fi. That doesn't mean it is any less valuable or important to the fans. Just as these people feel that their idea of science fiction is better than the mainstream sci-fi stuff, there were people that wrote the stuff they consider trash that considered the way others approached these things as wrong. (I can think of one author that made it clear that he valued science above all else, but that it would most likely lead those seeking answers to their doom, and possibly that humans are too simpleminded to deal with reality...probably more of a reflection on himself there. Oh, and this fits with the Clarke quote, which can also be used to support the ancient astronaut theory, which the stories by this author are a twisted example of. Yes, I mean Lovecraft, again.)

The main reason Star Wars sucks is that it's boring.