Scifi or not?

John Scalzi’s post on SciFi Scannerabout whether or not some of the big movies from last year qualified as scifi got me thinking.  Not about those movies, since I didn’t see any of them (I don’t get out to movies much, having a 5 year old and all).  About A Boy and His Dog.  My mom (yes, my mom – she is one of my now 5 regular readers) actually just sent me an email suggesting I post about it and ask other people’s opinions of whether or not it is scifi.  I think it definitely is, being a post-apocalyptic film featuring a main character who communicates telepathically with his dog and a secret subterranean society that uses artificial insemination (which was well established as a technology but still considered kind of out there when the movie was made) to procreate and has android servants.  But I can see the argument that it is a surrealist fantasy heavy on the social commentary also.

Either way it is a fabulously bizarre film, and if you have never seen it, you should make a point to do so.  Also it has a very young Don Johnson as the lead (human) character.  (My mom once made the argument that the dog, who is the brains of their operation, is actually the main character.)

Wow that’s a lot of parentheses.

More Free Fiction!

I love reading stuff for free.  Probably why I’m such a fan of libraries.  Anyway, this one is a short story from Crotchety Old Fan, cleverly hidden at the end of one of his posts so you have to look at his blog to read it (hmm, perhaps Mike Glyer at File 770 has a point…).

The story, Masker Aid, is a clever and entertaining poke at the government’s increasing lack of concern for civil rights and privacy.  It is written in the first person by a man who goes guerilla against a massive system of surveillance cameras set up in almost all public spaces in every major city.  And he does it in a completely legal (and smartass) way.

So pop on over to the Rimworlds site and take a read.

Cloned hamburgers?

The Pink Tentacle, that oracle of the Japanese technology front, brings us news of recent cloning controversies in Japan.  Apparently, researchers have been able to successfully clone the prize bull who founded the Hida beef franchise.  (No, I don’t know what Hida beef is, but apparently it is yummy.  And expensive.)  The bull died in 1993 after having sired over 40,000 calves (impressive!) and has now been resurrected, presumably to continue producing tasty offspring.  The controversy comes into play in the form of consumer distrust of cloned food products.  There is currently a study being conducted by the Japanese Cabinet Office’s Food Safety Commission (good to know the Japanese have governmental agencies with ridiculously long and unwieldy names too – I suppose that is a side effect of any bureacracy) about the safety of cloned food products that will help determine the fate of these clones.  In the meantime, the Japanese government has requested (?) that the companies working on cloned beef voluntarily (??) take measures to keep it out of the food supply.  (Somehow I don’t think it would go down that way in the US.)

Now, aside from the fact that cloned food is apparently way closer than most people realize, the thing I find most interesting about this is that scientists were able to successfully clone an animal that had been in deep-freeze for more than 15 years.  Maybe all those nuts who had themselves cryogenically frozen weren’t so nutty after all.