******MAINFRAME-SIZED SPOILERS!****** Two years after the homicidal HAL 9000 made its debut in “2001: A Space Odyssey” and 14 years before Skynet is mentioned in “The Terminator,” there was a lesser known but equally dangerous supercomputer-based artificial intelligence known as “Colossus: The Forbin Project” (1970). Based on the book “Colossus” by Dennis Feltham Jones (1918-1981),…
Tag: HAL9000
“2010: The Year We Make Contact” (1984): 35 years of a future past…
*****MONOLITH-SIZED SPOILERS AHEAD!***** Back in 1984, the Cold War was in full swing. Soviet Russia (before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union) was the binary enemy of the United States; they were the ‘commie pinkos’ and we were the ‘capitalist swine’ (even in those days, I never bought that propaganda). The US space shuttle…
Ten years of “Moon” (2009); a retro sci-fi study in loneliness and identity…
It’s been a decade since writer/director Duncan Jones (son of “Ziggy Stardust” himself, David Bowie) unveiled his independent, old-school-style science fiction film “Moon”, which had a limited theatrical release in the summer of 2009. I went to see “Moon” twice during its run, driving all over southern California to find theaters where it played, but…