Archive for the ‘scifi’ Category

Too Many Words about “The Matrix” Trilogy

Monday, March 13th, 2006

This is an interesting article that helps fill in some of the holes in the Matrix trilogy’s story.

There were four versions of the Matrix. V1 was designed by the Architect. It was a masterpiece of simplicity and beauty which collapsed nearly immediately. Why? It was boring. The humans living in it probably rebelled against their situation and within the logic of the simulation itself destroyed the environment in which they lived. The simulation failed when its internal logic required a catastrophic die-off of humans, eventually limiting at zero. Before that could happen, the Architect shut the simulation down, temporarily put all the humans into a coma, and tried again.

Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman

Friday, March 3rd, 2006

This is a fantastic and hilarious comic set in the Half-Life universe and rendered using the Half-Life 2 engine along with Garry’s Mod.

Concerned is the story of Gordon Frohman, former Black Mesa entry-level employee, survivor of the Portal Storms and the Seven Hour War, and now earnest and hard-working citizen of City 17. Frohman is a simple guy trying to earn an honest buck in a post-apocalyptic world ruled mercilessly by hordes of heavily armed alien hybrid soldiers (called Combine) bent on draining the Earth of its last natural resource and exterminating the human race. He also enjoys playing backgammon.

Gordon Frohman arrives on the scene a few weeks before Doctor Gordon Freeman — scientist, hero, anti-citizen, and star of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 — first appears in City 17. Due to the similarity in their names, Frohman is often initially mistaken for the crowbar-wielding Freeman, though due to Frohman’s chatty nature and general incompetence the error is usually sorted out fairly quickly.

Very funny and incredibly well done.

The 10 Best Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed

Tuesday, February 14th, 2006

Funny rant on how it all went horribly wrong.

From the piece: “There was a movie that perfectly captured the Douglas Adams experience, the combination of bitter sarcasm and sharp imagination, the droll British wit and whale-exploding slapstick that infused his novels. And that movie was Shaun of the Dead. That movie was not, unfortunately, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a movie that floated around Hollywood for about 20 years before it finally appeared in theaters as a flat, lifeless, americanized lump that was mostly hated by people who liked the book and loathed by people who hated the book. “