[ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit!

[Keith Henson]

At 05:27 AM 5/6/2007 -0400, Ben wrote:

>Unfortunately, I think the hardest part of getting a good H+ movie made 
>would NOT be convincing a producer to take on a good H+ script (though 
>that may be very hard), but rather keeping it from turning into something 
>idiotic in the course of the movie-making process.
>
>The history of SF films is rather more dismal than the history of SF 
>novels, I suppose because good SF is about ideas at least as much as human 
>personalities and emotions; whereas mainstream film is almost entirely 
>about human personalities and emotions and can barely deal with ideas at all.
>
>So, as I see it, the real key to getting an H+ film of any positive value 
>(artistic, memetic, political or what have you) out there would be to find 
>a producer, director and scriptwriter who ALL were sympathetic to the H+ 
>set of ideas.  If this happened, something really cool could come out of 
>it, with potential to change peoples' minds as well as entertain them.
>
>But don't fool yourselves that simply putting the right script in the 
>hands of a producer with money is gonna to it.  Don't underestimate the 
>degree to which the film industry can dumb down, and totally lose the 
>point of, a great book or a great script (in SF, but not only in 
>SF).   We've all seen it happen time and time again.
>
>So if y'all are serious about this, the first step IMO would indeed by to 
>find producers and/or directors who fundamentally "get it."  Without that, 
>it's not worth bothering.
>
>A distorted, confused, conceptually misleading H+ movie might still be 
>popular, and might well leave the movement worse off than had it not been 
>made.

I think Ben is exactly on target here.

Consider Nano by John Robert Marlow.  It seems to have been back written 
from a screen play and while it is ok for a Matrix type adventure it was so 
awful in other ways that I did something unusual and wrote a review of it:

*******************

This book has a Vernor Vinge quote on the back cover and is about the 
coming technological Singularity (look it up using Google).

And Vinge is right in what he says; the book will make a spectacular movie.

But oh man is it painful to read. Not because of the story line. Even if a 
bit predictable it's ok for Matrix type violent adventure.

The problem is the "science," or rather what is supposed to pass for science.

Nanotechnology is not magic and most of my complaints are about gross 
violation of conservation of mass, thermodynamics, mass flows, doubling 
times and the like. But that's not all the places it will irritate you. On 
page 133 the good guys are trying to see who the bad guys are by analyzing 
a depleted uranium bullet. "We should have a signature on the uranium by 
the end of the day; from there we'll have the nation and reactor core of 
origin."

I know what this story bit is imitating--Tom Clancy's "Sum of all Fears" 
where the origin of plutonium in a bomb is determined from impurities. But 
depleted uranium that's used for things like bullets never went near a 
reactor. It's "depleted" of the easy to fission isotope U235. This is the 
kind of error a knowledgeable editor should have caught.

The scenes with nanotechnology devices are every bit as bad. Toward the end 
of the book he has nano disassemblers eating away at a seaport city. In a 
short time they have created a hole where massive amounts of seawater is 
pouring in. So where did a fair fraction of a cubic mile of dirt go?

Early in the book the hero stops a car in seconds by growing a huge redwood 
tree in the middle of the street. Now, nanotechnology *can* grow redwoods a 
good deal faster than the natural way, but not *that* fast, not starting 
with a tenth of a cubic centimeter of nano machines. Eric Drexler makes a 
case for doubling in an energy- and material-rich environment of 20 
minutes. Estimating a redwood at meter square by 100 meters tall, growing 
from a 0.1 cc is an expansion of a billion, 10 exp 9. Since 10 exp 3 is 
about 2 exp 10, we are talking 30 doublings, ten hours by Drexler's estimate.

And you don't even want to think about Marlow's understanding of 
thermodynamics. Someone told him that heat is a problem when making nano 
things fast. So he "solves" it thus:

"Thermal problems?" . . . . "If it becomes a problem you assemble water for 
evaporative cooling, then grab the atoms in the vapor and do it over again."

*Sigh.*

(Grabbing the vapor returns every bit of heat evaporation took away, and 
"assembling" water from atoms releases the searing heat of an oxy hydrogen 
flame.)

I am reminded of the first "chemistry" teacher I had in high school. First 
day he told us that boiling water was a chemical reaction that broke up the 
water into hydrogen and oxygen which was called "steam."

About half way into the first semester the FBI took him away. Fortunately 
for Mr. Marlow they don't do that for authors making such mistakes. <grin>

The shame is that with some advice on science and engineering the story 
could have been written so that it didn't violate physical laws and been 
just as exciting.

As Dr. Vinge says, it will make a spectacular movie. But if you know even a 
little about science or engineering reading the book will irritate the heck 
out of you.

Keith Henson

PS If you want an example of high adventure that does not violate physical 
laws try _The Revolution from Rosinante_ by Alexis A Gilliland. A bit dated 
(1981) but still it has an excellent treatment of computers that transcend 
humans and are starting to take care of humans the way humans take care of 
cats. Mr. Gilliland just gets science and engineering details *right.*

***********************

You might want to read the other 19 customer reviews on Amazon.  One of 
them contains:

"Mainly accurate science - as a nanotechnology columnist the writer has a 
good overview of the field . . ."

Incidentally, the Rosinante books include a subplot where an AI creates a 
religion specifically for humans who live in space and another AI becomes 
the main proselytizer for the religion.

Some of you know I have been working on a post singularity novel.  (An 
early draft of one chapter was serialized on sl4 and generated little or no 
comment.)  A Hollywood screen writer proposed turning that chapter into a 
script.  But instead of a poignant and ambiguous tale where the animals are 
left with Africa, the script writer wanted the female character to discover 
the medical clinics as an evil plot and lots of violence to destroy the AI 
clinics.

There are worse things than no movies about H+ and the singularity.

Keith