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Comment on What are the best science fiction short stories, novellas, and novelettes you have ever read? in ~books
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Comment on Communist robot dreams in ~tech
famicommie Link ParentSide discussion: I don't get the hype behind the movie Stalker. This is coming from a guy who loves slow moving sci-fi like 2001 and Blade Runner. Spoilers ahead: In Stalker nothing ever happens....Side discussion: I don't get the hype behind the movie Stalker. This is coming from a guy who loves slow moving sci-fi like 2001 and Blade Runner.
Spoilers ahead:
In Stalker nothing ever happens. Despite the stalker's vigilance and admonishments, his charges traipse through the Zone with little consequence for such a blasé approach. Walk through an abandoned house, go backwards, run through a dangerous tunnel: everyone is excited but otherwise fine. Since said charges are experts in their relative fields, they arrogantly talk past each other for most of the movie while the curmudgeonly stalker offers third party commentary that's pretty much ignored by the author and scientist. The director opted for several excruciating takes with flowers, doorways, phone poles, or nearby concrete structures taking up more than a third of the screen for several minutes. There just aren't any metrics where I could recommend the movie to anyone.
Maybe I'm just a cinema philistine (and that's fine for me), but I don't understand why Stalker is so heavy on praise despite what feel like obvious shortcomings. Is there a specific aspect that bears a rewatch?
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - short story by Harlan Ellison widely considered to be the beginning of the "evil AI trope"
Ubik - novella by Philip K. Dick that isn't my favorite but really shines as an example of Dick's surrealist style
Roadside Picnic - Soviet novella that inspired the STALKER film and video games
Neuromancer - William Gibson novella that's widely considered to be the first cyberpunk work
I can't remember the name, but there's also a book that's a collection of Gibson's short stories and I have a couple of books with collections of Soviet science fiction short stories.