Once again, Mr.Simpson scores a fuck ing goal. I finally saw this gem — films come out here about two weeks afte they do in the U.K/U.S — and it is utter garbage. The whole eco log i cal theme was too hyper bolic, as if the planet were at the edge of col lapse, when in real ity we still have a cou ple cen turies to go before the level of poi sons in the atmo phere reaches a cri ical thresh hold. Besides, any aliens who found a planet with a sen tient species would be far more inter ested in the species than on the planet. The orig i nal was bet ter in the sense that nuclear weapons cn really wie out all life on Earh sans cock roaches in 20 min utes, giv ing the orig nal film a sense of real urgency.
What really pises me off, though, is that, with so much truly great sci-fi out there, they would make such a sopho moric film on an even more sopho moric story. You know what I would really like to see in the sil ver screen? “The Xeelee Sequence”, by Stephen Bax ter. It is a much deeper, and more stim u lat ing science-fiction than most of the garbage out there:
It is the year 70,000 AD, and Humans, after a series of wars and diplo matic deal ings, have sub dued the entire MW Galaxy and are now a galaxy-spanning civi iza tion that is the most pwer ful they are aware of. How ever, when Humaniy reaches the cen ter of the galaxy, they meet the Xeelee, a mys te ri ous race of aliens who con trol the super mas sive black hole at the cen ter of the galaxy. The Xeelee are pos s esed of very strange tech nol ogy that appears mag i cal and incom pre hen si ble for the extremely advanced Human galac tic empire. After a war that lasts for a few thou sand years and in which the Xeelee seem to mosty ignore Mankind, the Xeelee aban don the black hole and Humans take con trol of it. To make a long story short, the black hole at the cen ter of the MW was only one of mil lions of black holes in mil lions of galaxies the Xeelee con trol. In fact, they are spread across the entire Uni verse liv ing at the cen ter of galax ies, where super mas sive black holes are, and they use these super mas sive black holes for their own purposes.
What Human ity ignores is that the Xeelee are on a cosmic-wide war against the photino birds, dark mat ter beings that are acceler at ing the death of stars through out the entire Uni verse because they pre fer stars in a white dwarf sta tus, and that the “war” with Humans for con trol of the super mas sive black hole at the ceter of the MW, wich mobi lized the entire resourcs of the galaxy-wide Human empire, was a minor dis trac tion for the Xeelee, and they gave it up because they had mil lions of super mas sive black holes and the loss of one would make no dif fer ence to them and they couldn’t afford to bte with any thing other than the photino birds. Humans were these galaxy-spanning civ i liza tion pos s esed of inced i bly advaned tech nol ogy, such as warp drive, grav ity manip u la tion and the abil ity to creat time-dilation fields, and yet they were like fleas com pared to the Xeelee. In fact, the Xeelee evolved for BILLIONS of years since the Big Bang, and their tech nol ogy is so hyper-advanced as to be beyond god-like. Some of the descip tons Bax ter gives of the strug gle between the Xeelee and photino birds are headache induc ing, such as the Xeelee throw ing entire galax ies as if they were pieces of rocks at their ene mies, and engi neer ing their entire civi iza tion in a multi-dimensional per pet ual time-loop so as to give them selves more time AND options to defeat the photino birds. The “wings” of Xeelee craft are made of time-space costruct itself, allow ing them to travel between uni verses, dimen sions and time instantly. However, the most impres sive descrip tion of all is of the “The Ring” an object 200,000,000 light-years across built by the Xeelee of time-space con struct that is so mas sive that it can tear a hole in our Uni verse to another Uni verse, which they built to escape the photino bird once and for all. The last book of the sequance is “The Ring”, and it ends with the Xeelee finally fin ish ing off Human ity by mak ing all the stars in the MW die except for the Sun, and then they lock the remain ing Humans on Earth inside a four-dimensional quan tum prison, leav ing Human ity to pon der it’s mis take eter nally — for time never passes inside a 4-D prison — while watch ing the photino birds kill all the stars in the Universe until dak ness is all that’s left. Humans finally under stand that they should have been fight ing the photino birds, and compre hend how fool ish it was to oppose the hyper-powerful aliens. The book ends with the Xeelee finally con ced ing defeat to the photino birds after 20 bil lion years of war, and exit ing our Universe via the ring.
What I like about this book is that Bax ter has a PhD in physics, so can afford to give minu tiae descrip tions of the tech nol ogy and sci ence behind the races in his book wthout look ing fool ish. The other thing I like is that most sci-fi por trays civ i liza tions that are cen turies or at best mil lenia ahead of us, whilst with the Xeelee Bax ter describes a civ i liza tion that is truly hyper-advanced, being bil lions of years ahead of where we are today. The Xeelee make the gods from most mytholo gies seem like impo tent pussies in com par i son: not only do they have power over the entire Universe, they have almost com plete power over real ity, cre at ing univeses, time-periods and their own laws of physics at will. Their sci ence is sim ply beyond Human com pre hen sion, being some 20 bil lion years ahead of ours. The incred i bly advanced Human galac tic civl iza tion from the year 70,000 were looked upon by the Xeelee in the same way the Human galac tic civ i liza tion would look upon a Pale olithic hunter-gatherer tribe. Truly titanic and awe-inspiring.
http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2008/12/18/earth-to-keanu-youre-a-bit-late-but-you-look-greatSomeone call this guy a shrink fast.
