“Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.”
- Ursula K. Le Guin
“All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don’t, our lives get made up for us by other people.”
- Ursula K. Le Guin
Nerd alert: I fuck with science fiction, and I fuck with it hard. Everyone who grew up in the 80’s grew up with Star Wars, but not everyone chose to continue down that lonesome path of concerned parents, extended virginity and the eternal looming threat of a wedgie. Who can blame them? Prior to the terrifying and just plain annoying dominance of Silicon Valley half-droids over our collective socioeconomic future and the iron grip of American comic book IP on the output of our mass entertainment conglomerates, being a nerd was kind of a bad deal. I don’t need to spiral down an emotional wormhole and lay out endless examples of my own teasing at the hands of the blessedly un-nerdy, when I can just point out that it was necessary for a movie to exist in 1984 called Revenge of the Nerds. Sure, that particular film perpetuated and reveled in some problematic stereotyping of all its characters, be they jock or dork—not to mention the fact that it is one of countless American films of the era that CONDONE ACTUAL RAPE—but it’s still a good indicator of cultural life at the time. It was hard out there for a nerd. Fast forward to 2021 and the world’s most representative geeks are also the two richest humans alive, both of whom have employed their limitless resources to craft a distinctively crappier version of the future that the grandest visions of our boldest sci-fi writers promised us. We may not have eradicated the ravages of inequality or revolutionized our inept & archaic systems of (failed) food distribution, but at least Jeff Bezos has figured out how to make a vast personal fortune off of pretty much everything that is ever sold, anywhere on the planet (props for saving The Expanse, though). Our public transit network is still an absolute joke and our literally fatal reliance on fossil fuels will doom us all, but at least Elon Musk built a pointless tunnel for slow automobiles underneath Las Vegas and got to deliver some bad jokes on a comedy show that has been in its death throes for decades. Revenge of the nerds, indeed!
But I don’t wanna focus on the negative. I’m trying to be more utopian, less dystopian. More Ray Bradbury, less John Brunner (although you should be reading both). The world doesn’t need any more dystopia than we’ve already got, and nobody will ever top “The Aftermath,” anyway. True SF heads know that there is a sense of wonder and possibility inherent in the best of the genre’s examples that can never be tarnished by the selfish, bankrupt dreams of today’s adult-baby tech-bros and megalomaniacal uber-billionaires. Refreshingly, the past few years have seen a resurgence of interest in the incredible work of Octavia E. Butler and there is an entire generation of new science fiction creators representing the vast diaspora of human experience. BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ paperbacks line the shelves of your favorite bookstore’s science fiction section, where the red Martian soil-caked boots of thinly veiled reactionaries like Robert A. Heinlein once dominated. As a genre, sci-fi (and its fire-breathing sibling, fantasy) may be historically undervalued by the stuffy bearded pipe-smokers of the Western literary canon, but fuck them. Their imaginations are encased in bad tweed anyway. And it should be obvious to anyone with eyeballs that science fiction has always enjoyed a comfortable foothold in the cinematic realm. Georges Méliès took the world on A Trip to the Moon all the way back in 1902, and Fritz Lang further transformed cinema with his revolutionary—both in technique and ideology—1927 masterwork Metropolis. By their very nature, science fiction films lean towards the progressive, and even the most dystopian bummers helpfully exist both as reflections of the worst habits & impulses of our present and warnings about the dire futures that could result should they continue unchecked. How disappointing then that the Wachowski’s invigorating and hopeful 1999 trans allegory The Matrix, a sci-fi milemarker which once again revolutionized the medium, was frustratingly misinterpreted by alt-right incels as some type of justification for their cynical worldview and antisocial drive toward dangerous and often deeply bigoted conspiracy theories. You can lead a horse to water, I guess…
But some of the best sci-fi films don’t necessarily need to revolutionize anything. One of the most powerful aspects of the genre is its elasticity, and its fantastical, futuristic environments can often frame relatable stories of our most basic human struggles and desires with more effectiveness than a comparatively commonplace modern drama. And what is more commonplace and basic than a deadbeat dad? I was fortunate enough to be raised by a very hard-working and marginally affectionate father. He may not have hugged me all that often and never really said “I love you” until I was well into adulthood, but he was always quietly supportive of me even during my weirdest phases (painting my fingernails black, collecting animal bones, hanging multiple The Crow posters, attempting to enjoy ska) and he set a pretty fucking stellar example of what a man born into modest means could accomplish & become (strong work ethic, appreciation of nature, calm & intelligent discourse, a loving and well-fed family). We don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things—and I know he thinks I’m a weirdo—but he’s never made me feel unwelcome or unappreciated, and I very much cherish my memories of him sitting down on the floor with me after a grueling day of work delivering the mail to watch me play bizarre and probably violent games with my action figures. My dad is stubborn and emotionally unavailable in a lot of ways, but he was always very patient with and kind towards me. That’s huge. A depressing number of kids don’t have that kind of comfort or support. And in a world where our vaunted “great thinkers” are seemingly focused on a vision of the future that narrows all of human dreams & ambitions down to the successful accrual of money & resources and the dehumanization of workers into little more than cogs churning the machinery of their master’s opulence, some good down-to-earth guardianship is one of the most valuable resources of all.
Or course, fatherhood can represent a million different things to a million different people. My relationship with my own dad has been a nice template for how to approach the world and try to be chill about my relatively unglamorous place within it. Despite having no idea what the word even means, my father taught me how to be pretty Zen. For better or worse I’ve modeled a lot of my own behavior off of his example. His perpetual skepticism and emotional distance have admittedly been problems in the past (especially for my mother), but I hope that I’ve done a good job of repurposing those attributes a bit more positively in my own personality. But the concept of responsibility is undeniably more important than personality, from a simple standpoint of survival. A friend of mine who has two children, when given the common compliment “I don’t know how you do it” responded with the very blunt and genuine “Because if I don’t, they’ll die, and I’ll go to prison.” This is what comes into mind whenever friends or family make the baffling observation that I myself “would make a great father!” as though being a chill person who can take care of a few animals is all it takes to successfully raise a child. Never mind the reality that I can barely feed myself, am terrible with money and absolutely hate kids! Still, I appreciate the misplaced vote of confidence. But the most important thing I’ve learned from my own dad is that I definitely don’t have what it takes to be a good one myself. Besides, the last thing this world needs is more of me. Despite the fact that pretty much everyone I know is popping them out like there’s no tomorrow (which is essentially true, and thus a weird move), the last thing this world needs is more of anybody! People suck! But again, that’s too negative. Maybe some of these little bastards will grow up to fix some of our issues, or at the very least write the next great science fiction novel. I’ll definitely read it.
This week I want to write about two recent science fiction films that have two things in common: 1) they are, in some way, about deadbeat dads, and 2) they are fucking great. The first is a lower-budget gem that understands the crucial importance of positive role models and interpersonal connection, and takes place in a gloriously soiled and believably unglamorous future. The second is a glossy epic filled with beautiful, recognizable faces that nevertheless doesn’t sacrifice its idiosyncratic and measured approach for the sake of empty spectacle. They are both a bit bleak initially, but are crafted with a fantasist’s stubborn refusal to give up hope.
PROSPECT (2018) dir. Christopher Caldwell & Zeek Earl
Few things can match the genuine thrill of a sci-fi fan stumbling upon a truly original, fully realized new world. It’s the feeling I felt when I discovered a tattered old copy of John Brunner’s 1968 magnum opus Stand on Zanzibar, buried deep and uncelebrated within the confines of some impossibly dusty used bookstore. Coughing and sweaty, I emerged from the catacombs of those disorderly shelves clutching the unknown tome to my chest, anxious to drop $2.75 on what I could tell from the cover and thickness would prove to be a true gem. I couldn’t have been more right. Brunner is a lesser-known amongst the more casual genre fans, which is a tragedy. His distinctly British take on a future ravaged by overpopulation has become a minor cult classic, but his other novels and short stories tend to be ignored. I myself have gone into a bit of a deep dive with his body of work, and must admit that it ain’t all classics. Homeboy was a writer in the most fundamental and literal sense; he never seemed to stop writing, pumping out countless dime-a-dozen blasts of cheap paperback sci-fi, stories often less interesting than the wildly imaginative covers promised. But they were never “bad.” And like so many proficient and unknown minor talents, he occasionally struck gold. Stand on Zanzibar, its loose sequel The Sheep Look Up (1972), The Jagged Orbit (1969) and The Shockwave Rider (1975) are all eerily prescient & provocatively pessimistic and have subsequently become some of my personal favorite novels, science fiction or otherwise. The worlds presented are so generously conceived and meticulously fleshed-out, therefore believable and engaging to an impressive degree. Such well-structured fantasy realms are the absolute pinnacle of what the genre can offer, and I highly recommend them.
Film-wise, I had a similar reaction to the under-seen Leigh Whannell movie Upgrade from 2018, a solid & brutal slab of cyberpunk nihilism that more successfully pulled off the ideas attempted by many better-known and exorbitantly more expensive blockbusters, so there’s another recommendation for you. The same year, filmmaking team Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl produced a feature length rendition of their short film Prospect, about a father/daughter team of rare gem prospectors desperately looking to score a life-changing motherlode on a distant alien moon. The setup is delicious in its simplicity, but the film also stuffs its story with enough morsels of an exhaustively realized alternate universe to provide quite a hearty meal for the imagination. This is a low-key, lived-in world with its own complex history and particular guidelines, efficiently summarized and brought to immediate life through a combination of impressive practical effects, thoughtful editing and the kind of particular little unexplained details that drive nerds wild. Similar to George Miller’s massive Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Caldwell & Earl’s film doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence with unnecessary explication or patronizing handholding. We are instead dropped directly into a fully conceived story in progress and must piece everything together for ourselves as it progresses. Newcomer Sophie Thatcher impresses with her naturalistic portrayal of Cee, the daughter to Jay Duplass’s aloof and drug-addled father figure Damon. Their relationship is obviously strained, and Damon doesn’t necessarily read as a likable character. But there are hints of connection between them, small moments of kinship derailed by his dependence on substances to navigate their shared existence of bare-bones survival on the economic edge of a distant—and difficult—universe.
Aside from a brief introduction in orbit, the story plays out entirely on “The Green,” a forest moon with vast swaths of moss-covered trees, an inhospitable atmosphere and a hidden wealth of a valuable material known as aurelac. Filmed entirely in the Hoh Rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, the scenery is breathtaking in its pristine beauty and unsettling in its unknowable depths. Cee and Damon are weathered pros at their particular lifestyle, but Cee clearly longs for something more stable and essentially ordinary. Her mother is dead, and her father is a utilitarian scavenger whose stunted emotional paralysis and drug addiction renders him incapable—or unwilling—to provide the nurturing and mutually respectful relationship that she needs at this stage in her development. Thatcher effortlessly embodies the angst and annoyance of a teenage girl, and her occasional retreats to the security of headphones blaring futuristic punk music will be relatable to pretty much anyone that didn’t magically leap straight from childhood to their 20’s. Damon may love her, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. He treats her like an employee, or a tool, imparting a working knowledge of survival through the tough-love approach relied on by so many father figures. His expertise is real and has kept them alive this long, but the desperation of their situation is visibly eating away at his patience, and the selfishness born of a genuine need and a clouded mind eventually results in his unceremonious death. Through a series of bad decisions and misunderstandings, Cee has found herself stranded on an uninhabitable world without a mother or a father.
Enter Ezra, the seemingly merciless prospector/pirate played with a smooth tongue and a rough exterior by the extremely likable and always welcome Pedro Pascal. Ezra’s introduction as a possible villain and gradual revelation as an unexpectedly humane man establishes a moral complexity that the film handles with the same degree of subtlety and nuance as its impressively understated world-building. Pascal—so effective despite never showing his face in Disney’s The Mandalorian—is by turns intimidating and hilarious, speaking with an elevated Shakespearean lexicon and miraculously registering deep emotional changes through the slightest adjustments of his facial expressions. The scene where he must undergo an emergency surgical procedure is top-tier performance material and one of the film’s many highlights. Circumstances will eventually lead to a codependency between him and Cee, each of whom will rely on the other for their continued survival and any chance of escape. As they navigate a hostile environment populated by bizarre religious fanatics and emotionless mercenaries, their relationship of necessity builds cautiously into an ostensible friendship, and it becomes evident that Cee sees something benevolently patriarchal and nurturing in Ezra that was always missing from her relationship with her actual father. He is likewise an opportunistic survivor, but the lack of any complicated personal history together allows him to really listen to her in a way that Damon never did. By the end of the film, we’ve watched them survive impossible odds by working efficiently together without obstructive familial baggage or ego-driven stubbornness; they each recognize their mutual need. And from that need fulfilled develops a sense of mutual respect. The film has gradually progressed from a stressful depiction of a strained relationship to an exciting adventure shared amongst new equals, and Cee has lost her boss, but gained a partner.
AD ASTRA (2019) dir. James Gray
James Gray makes films that look and play out like how I wish “classic Hollywood movies” looked and played out. His work embodies a certain romanticism and visual lushness that invokes this opaque idea of high-brow classiness, and his stories tend towards the formulaic in all of the best and most comforting ways. Having put in plenty of work probing the gritty stories of unlucky immigrants eking out an existence in their adoptive new homes, his focus has grown more expansive in scope and ambition, from his near-mythical adaptation of The Lost City of Z (2016) with its lush jungle landscapes and probing investigations into Charlie Hunnam’s face, to this grandiose journey to the far reaches of space that basically boils down to Brad Pitt being a cold jerk because he has a shitty dad. Tommy Lee Jones plays space explorer Clifford McBride, a famed hero who has been missing for 30 years after embarking on an historic mission to discover and contact alien life. He is also the workaholic absentee father to Pitt’s Roy McBride, an equally work-obsessed astronaut who is recruited to prevent the destruction of humankind when it is discovered that a series of increasingly deadly power surges emanating throughout the solar system may be originating from the elder McBride’s failed final mission, known as the Lima Project. Our introduction to Roy, and eventual understanding of his character, is meted out in somber internal monologues, hypnotic editing and brief flashbacks to the relationship he has allowed to die in pursuit of his career. Even in the absence of gravity, it seems, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
For basically being a father/son drama, the film kicks off in surprisingly high gear with one of the most intense space-related emergencies this side of Cuarón’s Gravity (2013). I’ll admit that I was completely unprepared for Gray’s ability to present a white-knuckle action sequence, but he honestly knocks it out of the goddamn park on multiple occasions in this movie. Some people will probably consider this a “slow” movie, but that’s honestly a bit mystifying to me because I feel like it never really lets up, similar to the start-to-finish chase scene progression of the Mad Max movies and Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer (2013). This is riveting shit, but miraculously patient in its portrayal. Gray sets aside plenty of time for philosophical pontification and sparse exchanges of dialogue, weaving a layered character study with a familial conflict that almost plays out like a kind-natured Oedipal scenario, punctuated by legitimately thrilling moments of pure action cinema. The near-future in which the story unfolds is also completely believable, populated as it is with a shadowy military-industrial complex, resource-obsessed moon pirates and extremely expensive commercialized space travel. This is far from a glowing prediction for the future of mankind’s cosmic journey, summed up chillingly with Roy’s disgust at our collective drive to recreate on other worlds the exact conditions of the one we struggled so valiantly to leave behind; as he astutely observes, “we are world-eaters.” As our own real-life adventures into space continue to result in little more than private wealth and heavens littered with space junk, it’s hard to deny his bitterness.
As the truth of his father’s circumstances comes to light, Roy must grapple with his own existence, surrounded as it has been by impenetrable emotional walls of his own creation. Ruth Negga, always extraordinary and always underutilized, appears as a space colonist who resents Roy’s privileged status as a citizen of Earth, which she has visited only once in her life and correctly assumes that he takes for granted. Shades of his father, whose murderous betrayal robbed her of her own parents and whose stubborn search for otherworldly intelligence betrays his own indifference to the glorious majesty of our home planet, the only one in the cosmos that can sustain the ultimate gift of life. Eventually the two men will meet face-to-face, and Clifford will come uncomfortably clean about his total disinterest in the family he left on Earth. Roy’s father—his hero and icon—is a shattered man with failing vision and a tenuous grip on reality who could not care less about him. It’s a gutting confrontation, all the more depressing for its generic lack of emotion and Roy’s quiet acceptance of his father’s absence of love. The Lima Project has essentially proven that we are all alone in this universe, and Clifford is incapable of handling this truth. His quest for extraterrestrial life was a search for God. Gray’s film is startlingly upfront in its assertion that neither exist, and that this is okay. As Roy comforts his diminished father, “Now we know… we’re all we’ve got.” But Clifford’s eyes cannot see it; having sacrificed the fortunes of his life in pursuit of an answer he did not want, he has been left with nothing.
It sounds bleak, and I suppose it is. But the film ends on a hopeful note, with Roy returning home to pick up the pieces of the life he had so long taken for granted and abandoned. I could see how some could find the ending sappy, but I also fuck with sappiness from time to time. The cosmos are interminable and unknowable, so a little bit of love can go a long way. But the film is never boring; there are zero-gravity knife fights, a lunar rover chase scene that plays out in total silence and takes my breath away every time I watch it, and a legitimately terrifying space ape gone bananas. It’s fun, I swear! But never at the expense of a story that unfolds with the respectable grace that Gray has absolutely mastered, and never through the kind of shortcuts or cheats that would insult a science fiction fan’s intelligence or squander its carefully constructed sense of awe. The score by Max Richter, Lorne Balfe & Nils Frahm may occasionally border on the manipulative swells that Hollywood exploits so well, but it is a truly powerful and deeply moving complement to the film’s journey. And if you don’t get goosebumps while Roy is gliding through the ring of debris that surrounds Neptune, protecting himself with a makeshift shield as the music intensifies and he laments the loss of his father, then I don’t believe you actually like movies. As for myself, this kind of cinema is essentially slow-motion crack; simmering existential doubt punctuated by thrilling bursts of pure visual action, and an emotional hue somewhere between naive optimism and acquiescent emptiness. Roy, like Cee in Prospect, loses his father, but with that loss he is free to pursue his own identity, untethered by the umbilical life support system that makes floating through space possible and the expectations & limitations of family unavoidable. What is a space dad if not a heavenly father? With the loss of obligation comes possibility, and with the death of God comes the birth of knowledge. This world is not a prison; it’s a library.
UMBERTO has been a hero of the fake-movie-soundtrack subgenre for over a decade now, and every single one of his releases is a banger. My personal favorite is 2013’s Confrontations, an instrumental synth concept album about alien abduction. This would definitely be a perfect companion piece to Phillipe Mora’s 1989 film adaptation of Whitley Streiber’s unsettling abduction memoir Communion, featuring the single greatest Christopher Walken performance of all time. But it vibes equally well with any sci-fi endeavor. I was lucky enough to see him perform to a room of less than 30 people on the 4th floor of some random warehouse in downtown LA a few years ago, and his creepy coked-out energy was electrifying in all the best ways. He has finally moved on to producing soundtracks for actual films, and was the perfect choice for scoring Adam Egypt Mortimer’s uneven but altogether unique film Archenemy from last year. Keep an eye on Mortimer, he’s got great ideas and a stellar visual palette.
Brutal death metal isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, including my own, but when it does manage to hit you, it hits hard. AFTERBIRTH’s Four Dimensional Flesh is an undeniable powerhouse of technical riffage and discombobulating left turns, all fleshed out (so to speak) by the futuristic ramblings & inhuman gurgles of ARTIFICIAL BRAIN vocalist Will Smith (lol). There are a lot of hyped-up cosmic death metal bands these days, and many of them are great, but this particular album hasn’t quite gotten the attention it rightfully deserves. Genuinely mind-bending stuff here. Vomit into the zero-gravity nightmare of the future. Fuck yeah.