Loud Thoughts

Fallen Angels Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Michael Flynn 978-0743471817

I nearly forgot about fictions. For so long, my reading queue has been exclusive non-fictions. Anything else got de-prioritized. Kid left this book for me after her visit and it popped to the top of my queue recently.

How delightful: Niven, SciFi, fictional world. I became envious of Kid’s 165-book reading year.

When Kid was in college, she described how Earth can turn into an ice ball. It was rather simple. Geothermal energy is not enough to keep Earth warm. If Earth reflect more sun energy than it absorbs, it get cooler. Once the polar ice sheet grows to a certain size, the entire ecological system turn into a positive feedback loop: the more ice, the more reflection, more heat loss, more ice. In time shorter than a lifetime, the whole Earth will get permanently stuck in deep freeze.

And Niven depicted how it would like. He (they) has the talent to make science personal.

The story began in the era that environmental and religious extremists have taken over the US government the 1984 Big Brother style, only they are in general against all forms of technology. Right before they seized power, a group of people escaped to the space and been living in orbit. Several decades later, two space dwellers came down to Earth accidentally, hence the title.

The authors were critical to irrational thinkers, hypocritical rules, and, of course, bureaucratic and corrupted governmental agencies. Against a group who were against animal furs, they argued that leather should be hated equally and suggested protesters to throw fake bloods toward bikers who wore leather jackets, in addition to rich women who wore furs.

At the time of their writing, Exxon Valdez spill was the worst in history. Yet most media have moved on and forgot about it a year later. I wonder how long would people remember this summer’s BP spill.

Which is the less evil: global warming or ice age? A very warm Earth will flood many beach properties but the ice age will also render many areas not habitable. If we tinker the climate and make a mistake, this Earth will likely to become one or the other. Choose.

Inception Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page

Yet another which-reality-are-you-in movie (the best one is still Matrix). The teaser has sufficiently prepared me. The rest of this review will be spoiling. Stop reading if you care.

The key idea is that people can dream together. This technology provided the opportunity to invade someone’s dream and manipulate the victim’s conscience. The common thing to do is “extraction” which is to steal the victim’s knowledge. In the opening act, Cobb attempted to steal from Saito’s dream. But Mal, his wife, ruined it. Cobb was caught and Saito enticed him to do an “inception” job that is to embed an idea into someone’s mind: the ultimate mind manipulation. Enters the second act, and the new “dream architect” played by the delightful Ellen Page. (I have watched four of her movies so far.)

Cobb’s real pursuit is to see his kids again. Deep down, he has been tormented by being responsible for his wife’s suicide. We, the audience, were kept in suspense. Did he killed his wife? Yes, no, and really yes. So the antagonist changed from Saito, Mal, and, finally, to Cobb himself.

The ending was a bit weak. Cobb’s decision to part with his dead wife led to the second decision to save Saito (poorly set up in the opening). A logic problem further weakened the ending: to wake up, one must be kicked at a higher level, not at the dream level. Yet Ellen Page and the victim woke up by falling off to a cliff.

Of course, the story never explain how to wake up from the limbo level. One just have to “find himself.” Oh well.

I think there is a new sub-genre in SciFi called “alternative reality.” Since SciFi is already a small genre, this will be even smaller. This kind of movies have a “long tail” that people will keep on watching it for many years to come. By definition, this will be a classic then.