The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher – a review
Mark Fisher’s latest – and tragically – final book The Weird and the Eerie explores encounters with the outside and the unknown in 20th and 21st century film, music and literature.
Science Fiction
The Soviet web
When brilliant Soviet cyberneticist Viktor Glushkov designed a blueprint for a computerised planning system, the Soviet Union looked on track to become web pioneers. In the end, however, there was to be no digital network.
2017, the Russian Revolution, and the idea of utopia
Billed as ‘a year of imagination and possibility’ to mark the 500th anniversary of More’s Utopia, 2016 didn’t work out that way. 2017, the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, is another opportunity.
Arrival and the possibility of conversation
Arrival fondly imagines a universal language that, once understood, facilitates spiritual awakening, a kind of Zen enlightenment that opens the way for a new era of peace.
Another look at The Man Who Fell To Earth
Nicolas Roeg’s film has many memorable scenes and images that entangle themselves in the mind, and is electrified by a charismatic lead performance by David Bowie. But the director’s habitual desire to shock through the shoehorning of several gratuitous scenes into his movie adds nothing to Tevis’ subtle tale.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – a review
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is arguably the most keenly anticipated film in movie history. Though Return of the Jedi, the final episode of the first Star Wars trilogy, was released more than 30 years ago the colossal cultural impact of George Lucas’s space opera continues to resonate.
Engineering utopia
Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty is not just any old history of post-war Soviet cybernetic mathematical modelling. This is an account of centrally administered resource allocation quite unlike any other.