Showing posts with label Dystopian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dystopian. Show all posts

Monday, July 1, 2013

Hello everyone!
I'm back! Please forgive my extended holiday. It was the end of the school year and well, it gets super busy in schools as we try to prepare for the new academic year!
But yes, I'm back - with a long overdue review!

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“We are not the people who made this world, Lukas, but it's up to us to survive it. You need to understand that.""We can't control where we are right now," he mumbled, "just what we do going forward.” Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus 

Maybe you read this a few years back? Maybe. I only recently came across it and I am absolutely glad I did!

This is a post-apocalyptic thriller that takes place in a silo buried deep in to the earth. Stairs run through the silo connecting the hundred or so levels. 


The only contact the people of the silo have with the toxic outside world is through a camera. A camera peers outside at the bland scenery and the population are able to see out. Any questions regarding life in the silo can see the perpetrators sentenced to 'Cleaning'. Cleaning is a death sentence... the prisoner is strapped in to a suit and is sent out to the outside world to clean the camera lens. The strangest part of the cleaning process though, is how always, without fail, perpetrators always, ALWAYS go and clean the camera.


Inside the silo they have farms, livestock, mines, hospitals etc etc. It's a very organised machine where people know their place and rarely venture out of them.


The Audiobook
Susannah Harker was the narrator for this particular version of the audiobook. There's another one narrated by Minnie Goode too, she did the omnibus version. 

Harker was ace though, I was strangely surprised as I usually like a more passionate performance and she was very slow and steady. There have been times where I've not been able to listen to an audiobook because of that type of pacing but Harker owned her voice and I thought she was magnificent. Of course she was also aided by excellent writing, and a great production too!

The Story

Okay, I admit it, I have a soft-spot for post-apocalyptic and dystopian novels. I just do, and this was right up my street!

The pacing is brilliant, the writing is awesome and although it is an exploration of a very popular genre - I found it re-imagined, unique and wholly entertaining.


I usually try and discuss the story in a bit more detail here but I don't want to spoil it. You see, this story is a spider's web and I'm sure that if I give any little parts away and you decide to read it... well, it'll all click too quickly and you'll curse me for it.

All I can say is this, keep in your mind the very strange phenomena of the prisoners being sentenced to go outside but then always choosing to clean the camera lens (CREEPY), and also keep in mind that the silo has everything that anybody needs; Farms, livestock, water, air, coal etc etc.

I really, really enjoyed this book but I will not give away any more than that... I promise!

If you go on to read it, please please come back here and let me know what you think. Maybe you'll agree with me, or maybe you won't at all! Anywho, enjoy and let me know!



Wednesday, May 8, 2013


Look, I'm just going to say it. Oblivion was sci-fi for chicks



The story goes like this:
It is 2077 and Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) is a drone repair man. He and his wifey are living at the top of a wicked-cool house above the clouds of earth. Earth, as we know it, has been destroyed after a war against an alien race. Circling the earth is a mahoosive space station apparently harbouring the survivors from earth. The human race is collecting water from our planet, ready to take it to one of the moons of Jupiter. Humans are going to start again.
Massive constructs are sucking up the water from the oceans and the drones protect them. Some aliens have apparently been left behind on earth and keep trying to sabotage the collection of the water. The drones are routinely attacked too, and so Harper must wake up every morning to go find missing drones, fix them up and send them on their merry way.

I have to admit. It's a pretty original premise! I was impressed!

To cut a long story short though, things start to go wrong and those aliens turn out to be humans and well, it's all just a mahoosive conspiracy and well - y'know, you'll find out. I don't want to give it all away.
Apparently this film cost around $120 million. $120 MILLION FOLKS! The CGI at times was truly quite wonderful. The movie is full of beautiful mountain scenery, gorgeous canyons, deserts, clouds etc etc. It's a feast for the eyes; but it seems that the director/producers thought that excellent special-effects were going to have us completely oblivious to the holes in the story.


This film is full of plot-holes. When I say full... I mean spilling over with them. It's just shocking. I love good sci-fi, I do. I don't need to understand everything; but come on, the plot-holes were CATASTROPHIC. So glaringly obvious that it started to look like the story-line was rushed.

Credit where credit is due, Tom Cruise was actually pretty amazing. I know, I can't believe I'm saying this too, but it was an excellent performance. If you imagine, 50% of the movie is Cruise alone on screen, I think he carried the movie very gracefully and was believable. Of course it's full of fighting, so for anybody who just likes to see examples of his 'prowess' you'll certainly get your fill in this film.

This movie have all the regular sci-fi movie tropes; aliens, advanced-technologies, action, suspense, clones, conspiracy, action, space-travel, explosions and romance... 
...hold up. Did I say romance? 

And this brings me to why this movie is sci-fi for chicks.
The whole movie... we find out, all rests on a romance story. Yah, and some random love-triangle which lacked believability. It wasn't even believable romance. It was something else. Contrived. Forced. This movie could have been a beautiful homage to hardcore sci-fi fans but instead they decided to stick their middle finger up at true men and women of sci-fi and instead cater for chicks who were going to be dragged to watch the movie by their husbands/boyfriends. It just didn't make sense.

The Matrix, for instance, had a romance-plot, but it wasn't IMPERATIVE to the story, and they certainly didn't seem to decide a third in to the storyline that actually it is memories of lost love that will save the whole human race. The Matrix has a sci-fi romance-plot done right. 


Bah. Disappointing.

This could have been awesome; but it wasn't.

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