Decipher SciFi

Flawed characters in history. Remembering to recognize that the characters we imagine may not be as close as we think to the real thing.

A short dead dude, but also irl an imposing figure. And not actually short! Of totally average height - the shortness thing was actually an ex post facto error in conversion from the units of measurement of his time and place.

Socrates -> Plato -> Aristotle. The Hemlock treatment vs living in the future. Socratic ignorance: “the only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.” Bill and Ted’s rolled high on wisdom, low on intelligence. :)

Gradual deafness. Bill & Ted picked him up in 1810, four years before he was reported to have gone completely deaf. So he may have had some limited ability to hear. Piano on the floor, stylus in the mouth, and other coping mechanisms. Beethoven’s metronome. OR MAYBE, he was actually just a crazy old smelly deaf guy and that’s why mall security had to come drag him away.

They visit his castle in 15th century England and meet two totally bodacious babes. Or something. Attention to linguistic detail in the film: everybody speaks the correct languages! More or less. 15th century English. Chaucerean and Shakespearean pronunciation.

Can they read? Write? Reading and writing as two separate skills. Credit cards. Introducing medieval princesses to fiat currency and a debt-based economy.

Dan Carlin said all of it better than we ever could: Wrath of the Khans.

Causal loops. Bootstrap and grandfather paradoxes. Dr Who on the bootstrap paradox. “Time circuits.”

Distress calls. Radio broadcasts and other ways to watch the best.speech.ever.

Wormholes. Telefragging. In-system ship speeds and an incredible ability to slow down.

Twenty years of reverse engineering alien tech has yielded great fruit. Propulsion! Anti-gravity.

It’s hard! Gravity wells. Magic fusion antigravity obviates the main utility of Lagrange points.

Fluid sack inertial dampening.Breathable oxygenated fluids. Vectors!

Muscular atrophy. Twenty years without moving. Communicating with locked-in patients.

Gratiuitous city destruction. Tactics and strategy. Are the aliens just jerks?

They flew into my butthole! My only weakness, how did you know?!

Why do cities lift off of the ground?

And metal. The creamy center is actually not creamy but rather solid iron. It’s like a Kinder Egg and a Cadbury Cream Egg had a baby. The sorts of doom we’d face by having our core disrupted/extracted. Magnetosphere and the molten core. The crust ranges from 3-25 miles thick, fwiw.

Massive energy to not only drill but keep the hole into the earth open. A hole in the bottom of the sea.

Jeff Goldblum is the master baiter. Alien queen fight. Insectoid queen morphology. Sexual dimorphism. Putting stuff up their butts for victory. Original idea, original idea, original idea:

The light novel (All You Need is Kill) -> the movie (Edge of Tomorrow) -> the marketing (Live. Die. Repeat.)

Save points. Back in my day. Old-school save system where you have to go back to the beginning every time.

The possibility of the cosmos awash in aggressive noodly alien murder machines. What are the odds they’d wind up at our doorstep?

Spaghetti Monster tumbleweeds! Bioluminescence. Alienness. Hybrid creatures. Hierarchy.

Zerg rush! Starcraft was almost Warhammer.

Reminds us of Elysium! Exosuit interfaces. Neural interface versus gestural. Safety mechanisms.

What are thresholds of alpha blood exposure to contract timeloopism? Best method: bathing? in the butt? in the mouth? All of the above? Will the effect ever “run out?” Blood-bathing, Sookie Stackhouse style.

Control of time loops. Like a garage door opener? TV remote? Is it time travel? Many-worlds interpretation. Branching timelines! Terminator meatballs.

Chris does. Whatever it takes!

The 50s, the 60s, and the 80s and the climate at the time of the film. Star Wars (but not that Star Wars).

Gatling and the Gatling Gun, Alfred Nobel and dynamite, Tesla and his particle beams, and…. nuclear weapons?

Text-To-Speech. Voder at the 1939 World’s Fair. Matthew Broderick’s computer. WarGames computer graphics and rendering radar screens.

Teaching computers to teach themselves. The point where this movie steps into scifi territory.

Dinosaur extinction hypotheses at the time of the film. Falken is a psychopath.

San Junipero, Men Against Fire, Hated in the Nation

Happy endings. Consciousness uploading. Children of the 80s, idealistic recollections and the English lens. Continuity of self. Crippling fear of death.

How we get people to do things for us and how technology can make that even more terrible. Hacking visual input. Creepy Watson sex dreams.

Covered in beeeeeees. Drone swarms. Social media hate.

We did an interview! Since it’s not the normal format, we’re releasing this as a bonus halfway between normal episodes.

We talk here with Cailin Munroe from The Expanse all about a bunch of stuff: the role of the producer, on-set work, diaper butts, ship designs, physics FX, device and environment UI, space hair, dogs barking, matte paintings, 3D animated sets, the next form of the blue goo ☠️

Alien attacks and death tolls. Independence Day and flying planes up the butt.

Liquid water and the Goldilocks Zone. Frozen water all over the galaxy. Water vapor too!

Schiaparelli, Percival  Lowell and the Martian “canals.”

Anatomy surprisingly like that of our tiny earth-based insects. Tool use? Telepathy? Queens controlling drones, but directly, apparently.

Distance and lightspeed considerations in trying to communicate with aliens who may pose an existential threat to humanity.

28 days. Distances to other stars.

Action per minute. Starcraft and command delegation.

Very very expensive weapons and the meaning of a dollar.

Nosedive, Playtest, and Shut Up and Dance

Slow motion train wreck.  Meow-meow beans. Chinese social credit system. Real life is this episode. Nuance and charity in judging other people.

Backpacking fantasy. Christopher’s beard jealousy. Working while traveling via the internet. Hideo Kojima. Near-death experiences, dream experiences, and neurological speed. Death spike hallucinations. American Psycho Hideo Kojima.

Integrity. Liam’s butt. The worst of the worst. Anonymous.

Segmented helix. Simulated/artificial gravity. Fusion reactors and constant acceleration. 0.5c after 30 years.

A red dwarf, 37 lightyears away from earth. Could the ship have made is to that point with the time and speed given? (no) This is the meat right here. Meaningless slingshots. Red Dwarves. Physics!

Generation ships vs stasis pods. Stasis as a resource-saving measure. IRL research in “stasis” and muscle-mass conservation. Acceptable levels of brain deterioration. “Minor” brain damage.

Kinda like magic. Atomizing rocks in space at 0.5c.

How simulated gravity works on a giant spinning torus (or, in this case, a segmented helix). How it ceases, and the physics necessary in order to create the effect seen in the film. Swimming out of floating water.