Wall-E and The Sparrow
I just saw Wall-E and I am all a-squee. As a sweet anthropomorphic little love story of surpassing cuteness, it rules. As SF, of course, it sucks big donkey balls, but that's not what we came for, no? I understand everybody being pissed about the fat-people mockery. Except that was actually a ham-handed attempt to shortcut the entire process of creating a dystopia... which is okay, because well-done SF dystopia isn't what we came for (and if it was, oh boy are you in trouble), but it sure would have been good if they could have pushed their shorthand more towards "children" and less towards "fat slobs," because "children" was more the real part. But the anthropomorphizing! The facial expressions and body language of all the little robots! The little cleaning bot is my favorite sidekick of all time now. And the sound editing, all the incredibly expressive beeps and clicks...
The Pixar people are just brilliant.
The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell.
I saw this on some kind of "best SF books you've never heard of" list or such, and have had the title on my to-read list ever since.
This hits a lot of my SF kinks- it's a somber, respectful, and un-preachy treatment of people of faith and crisis of faith, the aliens are anthropologically well thought out, the disaster is unexpected but inevitable all at once, and the emotional through-line is really serious hurt/comfort.
In some ways, to be honest, it felt like fic. The overall h/c frame finishes with a revelation of the rape of the lead male character- something that comes as a shock and surprise to other characters, and possibly to a general readership, but is utterly obvious from the first chapter to anyone familiar with fic tropes (and not badfic. This is ASTONISHINGLY well done). We are allowed to love, really love, each and every character, and crawl way into their heads and feel their pain and their struggles and their loves and cry for every death. The emotional intensity of characters who are sketched so briefly feels very fic-like to me; the author doesn't waste any time, no excruciating setup, no getting-to-know-you- she just dives straight in and lets us love them with an assurance of our cooperation that feels like fic. I found it very satisfying.
I could talk more about the crisis-of-faith aspect, or the astonishingly well done anthropology side, but... well, consider this a rec, okay?
The Pixar people are just brilliant.
The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell.
I saw this on some kind of "best SF books you've never heard of" list or such, and have had the title on my to-read list ever since.
This hits a lot of my SF kinks- it's a somber, respectful, and un-preachy treatment of people of faith and crisis of faith, the aliens are anthropologically well thought out, the disaster is unexpected but inevitable all at once, and the emotional through-line is really serious hurt/comfort.
In some ways, to be honest, it felt like fic. The overall h/c frame finishes with a revelation of the rape of the lead male character- something that comes as a shock and surprise to other characters, and possibly to a general readership, but is utterly obvious from the first chapter to anyone familiar with fic tropes (and not badfic. This is ASTONISHINGLY well done). We are allowed to love, really love, each and every character, and crawl way into their heads and feel their pain and their struggles and their loves and cry for every death. The emotional intensity of characters who are sketched so briefly feels very fic-like to me; the author doesn't waste any time, no excruciating setup, no getting-to-know-you- she just dives straight in and lets us love them with an assurance of our cooperation that feels like fic. I found it very satisfying.
I could talk more about the crisis-of-faith aspect, or the astonishingly well done anthropology side, but... well, consider this a rec, okay?