SciFi Tech Talk #000197 - Beyond Skyline

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2018 movie The Titan: "A military family takes part in a ground-breaking experiment of genetic evolution and space exploration." - imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2016 book "We Are Legion (We Are Bob)": Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty. The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2018 movie Anon: In a near-future world where there is no privacy, ignorance or anonymity, our private memories are recorded and crime almost ceases to exist. In trying to solve a series of unsolved murders, SAL FRIELAND (Owen) stumbles onto a young woman (Seyfried) who appears to have subverted the system and disappeared. She has no identity, no history and no record. Sal realizes it may not be the end of crime but the beginning. Known only as THE GIRL, she must be found before Sal becomes the next victim. —Andrew Niccol on imdb.com

Julie, Jeff and Mike discuss the 2013 movie Her: "Sensitive letter writer Theodore has just ended his marriage. Lonely, he goes out to buy an artificially intelligent Operating System that promises to give him everything he needs. Samantha is more than his average OS. She does secretarial work for him but also becomes his friend whenever he's lonely. They go out on adventures and travel together. He becomes the physical feet to get them places, and she the new eyes in which to see the world. Their intimate moments soon turn into love and they start an unusual relationship between OS and human. Things get complicated as they deal with Theodore's complex emotions and Samantha's inability to provide physical comfort. What happens to an OS when its consciousness is altered? Or to a sensitive man who doubts his emotions?" — Marielle on imdb.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2016 book Version Control: "Rebecca Wright has reclaimed her life, finding her way out of her grief and depression following a personal tragedy years ago. She spends her days working in customer support for the internet dating site where she first met her husband. But she has a strange, persistent sense that everything around her is somewhat off-kilter: she constantly feels as if she has walked into a room and forgotten what she intended to do there; on TV, the President seems to be the wrong person in the wrong place; her dreams are full of disquiet. Meanwhile, her husband's decade-long dedication to his invention, the causality violation device (which he would greatly prefer you not call a “time machine”) has effectively stalled his career and made him a laughingstock in the physics community. But he may be closer to success than either of them knows or can possibly imagine. Version Control is about a possible near future, but it’s also about the way we live now. It’s about smart phones and self-driving cars and what we believe about the people we meet on the Internet. It’s about a couple, Rebecca and Philip, who have experienced a tragedy, and about how they help — and fail to help — each other through it." - goodreads.com

Julie, Jeff, and Mike discuss the 2014 movie The Giver - "In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the 'real' world." - imdb.com