May 2017 *
If you liked Pandorum, I wanted to mention a couple of similar short stories, written way back in the 1940's.
One of them is called Far Centaurus, by A.E. Van Vogt. I discovered that story in about 4th or 5th grade, and it absolutely blew my mind. The idea is that a spaceship carrying a few astronauts in a form of drugged suspended animation travels to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system outside of our own solar system. The voyage takes hundreds of years (500 years)... when they arrive, they find that while they were in suspended animation on the voyage, humanity has experienced such stupendous technological progress that the journey that took them 500 years now only takes about 3 hours. There are spaceships zipping back and forth from Earth to the Alpha Centauri system several times in a single day, it's an easy flight to make, comparable to flying in a airplane today from NYC to... maybe Colorado or Texas. People can go back and forth in a single day. When the main character astronauts arrive at their destination, they learn that Alpha Centauri has several planets which have been named after them (the astronauts), and the planets are inhabited by billions of people, and there are vast cities, and a whole new culture, and an evolved language, etc... It's sort of like Christopher Columbus sailing into New York City harbor in 2017. One of the astronauts flips out when he learns this, and the other ones have a few adventures, then there's a twist. Anyways, I recommend the hell out of that story.
The other story is called Universe, by Robert Heinlein. It's about people on a spaceship that has been travelling through space for many, many centuries. They are not in suspended animation, they have lived through many generations in this way. There was some kind of mutiny aboard, many centuries before, and the people live at sort of a quasi-medieval, hobbit-like level, except that they maintain enough science to keep their food supply growing, and lighting, and other very basic things. But, the spaceship is enormous, and there is a population of mutants living on some of the decks that are far away from the main farming areas... it's a story about a guy who figures out that their world is not natural, but a spaceship that people BUILT, and he has to try to decide if he can train enough of his friends to operate the engines, the navigation system etc, and take control of the ship again.
Wait, sorry, it looks like Universe was just half of a longer story called Orphans of the Sky... I did not know that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky
Both stories are pretty fun to read, even today... it is a little like reading stories about Captain America, just in the sense that it's science fiction from the 1940's. Characters call each other lugs and mugs, and call women dames, and they probably say and do other things that seem strange to us, reading today. Sometimes it's pretty funny.
By the way, in Far Centaurus, one of the characters makes a quick reference to someone called Unthahorsten, which was the name of a character in the short story Mimsy Were the Borogoves, which was also written in the 1940's, and was (very roughly) the basis for the 2007 children's film The Last Mimzy. So, anyway... cool connection there.
Anyone have any other thoughts about Pandorum? I thought it was interesting that is was made by some of the same people who made Resident Evil. It has a lot of similarities to RE, like the main characters struggling with memory loss, and the general environment of a vast, technologically sophisticated, city-sized science-oriented structure that is somehow cut off from the rest of humanity... and, it also has the similarity of a population of roving monsters that will fuck you up bigtime if they catch you.
The creatures also reminded me a little of the Ghosts of Mars possessed people, just because of the spiky things sticking out of them, and also the cavern-dwellers from The Descent.
Anybody have any thoughts on any of this?
One of them is called Far Centaurus, by A.E. Van Vogt. I discovered that story in about 4th or 5th grade, and it absolutely blew my mind. The idea is that a spaceship carrying a few astronauts in a form of drugged suspended animation travels to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system outside of our own solar system. The voyage takes hundreds of years (500 years)... when they arrive, they find that while they were in suspended animation on the voyage, humanity has experienced such stupendous technological progress that the journey that took them 500 years now only takes about 3 hours. There are spaceships zipping back and forth from Earth to the Alpha Centauri system several times in a single day, it's an easy flight to make, comparable to flying in a airplane today from NYC to... maybe Colorado or Texas. People can go back and forth in a single day. When the main character astronauts arrive at their destination, they learn that Alpha Centauri has several planets which have been named after them (the astronauts), and the planets are inhabited by billions of people, and there are vast cities, and a whole new culture, and an evolved language, etc... It's sort of like Christopher Columbus sailing into New York City harbor in 2017. One of the astronauts flips out when he learns this, and the other ones have a few adventures, then there's a twist. Anyways, I recommend the hell out of that story.
The other story is called Universe, by Robert Heinlein. It's about people on a spaceship that has been travelling through space for many, many centuries. They are not in suspended animation, they have lived through many generations in this way. There was some kind of mutiny aboard, many centuries before, and the people live at sort of a quasi-medieval, hobbit-like level, except that they maintain enough science to keep their food supply growing, and lighting, and other very basic things. But, the spaceship is enormous, and there is a population of mutants living on some of the decks that are far away from the main farming areas... it's a story about a guy who figures out that their world is not natural, but a spaceship that people BUILT, and he has to try to decide if he can train enough of his friends to operate the engines, the navigation system etc, and take control of the ship again.
Wait, sorry, it looks like Universe was just half of a longer story called Orphans of the Sky... I did not know that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky
Both stories are pretty fun to read, even today... it is a little like reading stories about Captain America, just in the sense that it's science fiction from the 1940's. Characters call each other lugs and mugs, and call women dames, and they probably say and do other things that seem strange to us, reading today. Sometimes it's pretty funny.
By the way, in Far Centaurus, one of the characters makes a quick reference to someone called Unthahorsten, which was the name of a character in the short story Mimsy Were the Borogoves, which was also written in the 1940's, and was (very roughly) the basis for the 2007 children's film The Last Mimzy. So, anyway... cool connection there.
Anyone have any other thoughts about Pandorum? I thought it was interesting that is was made by some of the same people who made Resident Evil. It has a lot of similarities to RE, like the main characters struggling with memory loss, and the general environment of a vast, technologically sophisticated, city-sized science-oriented structure that is somehow cut off from the rest of humanity... and, it also has the similarity of a population of roving monsters that will fuck you up bigtime if they catch you.
The creatures also reminded me a little of the Ghosts of Mars possessed people, just because of the spiky things sticking out of them, and also the cavern-dwellers from The Descent.
Anybody have any thoughts on any of this?
but hey, Pandorum's ok, Denny Quaid space age aid. n Lone Alpha Ben's a talent too.