Surrogates Movie Review

Surrogates explores the idea of tele-presence taken to the extreme.  Its bleak vision of a future where people no longer interact or go anywhere for fear of getting hurt, but instead send out powerful androids controlled remotely through a virtual reality interface, is a frightening reflection of our growing fearfulness as a society.  It is a trap that we as a people could all too easily fall into.

While I really like the depiction of the technology in this film, and the way that it highlights some potential problems with this type of technology, I do not like the one sided view this story portrays.  It only explores the bad parts of the new society, not the beneficial parts.

The plot of this movie is that after society embraces surrogates for safety reasons someone is murdered by a virus uploaded to their surrogate that kills the operator.  The action follows a FBI agent named Tom Greer, who is investigating the case.  While investigating his surrogate is destroyed by anti-surrogate activists forcing him to carry on in real life.  In the course of the investigation Greer reconnects with the real world and realizes how hollow his existence has been.  In the end it turns out that the virus was created by the same man who made the surrogate technology. He now feels that it is being used incorrectly, and has decided to undo the damage he has done by destroying all surrogates and their operators.  The climax of the movie is that this man uploads the virus to every surrogate, and Greer must find a way to halt it.  In the end Greer opts to let the virus destroy all surrogates, but boots all users before they can be killed.

This movie was entertaining, but it could have been a lot better, and the ending was terrible. I would have liked to get a more complete picture of the effects of the technology on society.  This movie will likely only appeal the science fiction, and crime drama fans.  The action is ok, but takes a back seat to the investigation.  It is basically a cop movie with a science fiction twist.

This movie is available at www.amazon.com on disk or streaming as a rental or purchase.

WebMage by Kelly McCullough Book Review

This book is a very fun and fast paced read.  It has just the mix of fantasy/mythology and modern or futuristic setting that I really like.  This story navigates through a cyberpunked version of Greek mythology where the fates run giant magical computer networks to keep track of all the threads, and the fury's are Necessitiy's system admins for reality.

If there is anything that I don't like about this book it is the fact that you don't want to put it down to go to sleep at night.  There is always something going on in the book and it kept my interest the whole way through to the point that it was hard to find a good place to stop.  Be warned you may want to have the time to finish this book in one or two sittings if you are anything like me.  Thankfully the book is not too long.

The main character in this story is named Ravirn.  He is literalally a descendant of one of the fates, and he is a hacker of reality.  He has a webgoblin familiar that helps him with his magic or code named Melchior that can shape shift from goblin to laptop.  Ravirn's special bit of divinity is to find the loopholes, and cracks in any spell or code, which makes him a great hacker but his clan matriarchs(the fates) see him as the ultimate debugger.  When Atropos asks him for help he has no choice but to see what she wants.  It turns out she has a bug in her latest program to remove that pesky free will from the world which would make the fates jobs much easier.  Before he can say no and send out a warning she lays the Pandora curse on him as the ultimate non disclosure clause.  Sure he can tell people whats going on but nobody will believe him.  So he sets off to save free will with Melchior and the few friends who will help him no matter what.  In his quest to save free will Ravirn bounces all around the multiverse and makes a lot of enemies and a few friends along the way.  In the end its hard to catch or stop the demigod of loopholes, and with the help of Eris and a webgoblin underground he manages to save the day.

 In my opinion this book is appropriate for anyone who likes a great adventure story with a few exceptions that I can see.  First science fiction or fantasy fans who don't like to see the two genre's mix are not going to like this.  Second people who are fans of Greek mythology will either love it or hate it depending on their perception of who and what the Greek gods are.  Ravirn does not treat the gods with much reverence, but to him they are family so it makes sense to me.  Most of us don't revere our great uncles and aunts very much either.

This book can be bought in print or in e-book form at www.amazon.com or check your local bookstore and ask them to order it.

The Matrix Movie Review

The Matrix is a science fiction cyberpunk film that really makes you think.  It hooks into the feeling that many people have that there is something is wrong with the world, and rides that for all its worth.  In the end I left this movie questioning whether the reality I had lived my whole life in was in fact reality at all.  To be honest I am still not sure, but if this is not reality I do not have a way out like the characters in the film so the point is moot.

The first part of this movie is a new take on Plato's allegory of the cave.  The main character, Neo, and the whole world he lives in exist in the cave.  The first part of the story is his journey out of the cave and into the real world with the help of hacker/freedom fighter Morpheous.  The science fiction cyberpunk twist to this is that the cave is a giant MMO of modern life that everyone is neurally jacked into.

The harsh reality outside the cave is that most of humanity has been enslaved as biological energy sources for the AI's we made in the distant past.  It turns out that Neo's savior's think that he is in fact their savior.  The rest of the movie is Neo finding the answer to the question "Is he this savior figure that his new companions believe him to be?".  In the end the answer is complex.  For most of the movie Neo is not the savior, but during all of that time he is on the journey to becoming what everyone thinks he is.  It turns out that the biggest challenge he must face is within himself.

Apart from all of the philosophy hidden in this movie it is also a great action adventure film.  The people who are freed from the matrix and come back are granted powers based on their knowledge that the reality they see around them does not have set rules.  They can push themselves harder and do amazing things, but if they die in matrix their mind self destructs because it accepts the lie of death.  They have adversaries in the form of system agents (who look like secret service), and the conflict between the hackers/freedom fighters and the system agents frames and goads Neo's inner conflict.

In the end this is a great movie that causes you to really think about what reality is, and on the limitations we as humans put on ourselves that may not have any basis.

This movie can be purchased on disk or as a digital stream for rent or purchase at www.amazon.com.