ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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gort

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What's on tap for this fine Saturday, smack in the middle of Spring?

~ We start with a movie that has a great poster and a grandiose title.

~ Then there's an ambitious silent movie based on a dull Jules Verne story that later became a superb Harryhausen film.

~ Finally we have thread about an imaginative concept I came up with for a novel a planet with global ocean filled with aquatic creatures, some of which are intelligent!



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War of the Colossal Beast (1958)

Wikipedia's article has a section dealing with what film critics said about this movie. It's pretty funny.
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Reception

Contemporary film fan-historians Kim R. Holston and Tom Winchester noted that the film was "... a low-budget ship with Bert Gordon at the helm, so the special effects are unsurprisingly average; one always knows the 'giant' was filmed separately and mixed in with other shots".
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Think about that last sentence. Did Holston and Winchester expect Bert I. Gordon to find an actually giant for the role?
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The Mysterious Island (1929)

The fine video of this movie uses a wonderful print, and it includes both dramatic music and excellent sound effects.

To make the movie play at 24 fps, click on the "settings" icon (the "cog" in the lower right corner), then on "playback speed", and change the speed to 0.75.





That way the people will move around normally, not like hyperactive folks who should switch to decaf.

The music plays at the same pitch, but at a slightly slower tempo to match the actions on screen. It sounds great.

And this adjustment is especially effective in the scenes where the divers are supposed to be walking slowly underwater in their pressures suits . It makes a huge difference, guys.

It's a shame you can't download it and make this change. Oh well . . .
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Aquatica - A proposed series of novels

Gord, you and Pye-rate bring up interest questions relevant to my story idea.

Under what circumstance are "tools" real needed on an all-water world?

I'm not suggesting that the Aguaticans on my all-ocean planet need tools the same as we do. But the fact that they live in such a very different environment than ours means the challenges they face in their efforts to survive and advance are not the same.

For example, aquatic life forms don't have to deal with changes in seasonal temperatures. They don't have to worry about inclement weather.

The don't have to invent better means of transportation than simply walking. They can literally "fly" over any terrain on the ocean floor.

They're all surrounded by an abundance of food, and they can literally eat anything that swims by!

They have no need for physical structures like houses which protect them from dangerous weather or drastic temperature changes. The same is true for roads. And they don't need to "clear the land" for cultivation.

In short, their need to develop technology is based on an environment so different from ours that almost none of the rules which apply to our technology can be applied to theirs.

I underlined the word "almost" for a reason. I'll leave it you folks to figure out which rules DO apply to both them and us.

Wait . . .

Oh, what the hell. Here's a few areas I'm sure you've already thought of.

High speed transportation - If an aquatican needs to get somewhere faster than it can swim, it requires a fast submarine, the way we use buses and commercial airlines.





Long range communication - Obviously these guys will need cell phones!

Medical facilities - Everybody gets sick or injured from time to time . . . even fish! These guys will need clinics and hospitals on the ocean floor!

No, wait . . . mobile hospitals in big submarines which cruise around to the areas where they're needed the most!





Wow, see how much fun it is to come up ideas for Aquatica?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)