The Silence – Film Review

I did recently finish reading The Silence by Tim Lebbon and couple of days later got to watching the Netflix adaptation. I have been reading a few of his books lately and I consider Lebbon to be one of the most interesting and rewarding modern British horror/fantasy authors. The book of The Silence was set here in the UK, and while elements of news reports and drama of the vesp creatures movements come from around Europe and the globe, the focus is mainly from the point of view of  the young daughter Ally who is deaf and uses sign language to communicate with her family, and a lot of the second half of the book follows her father Hugh as he explores alone for food and shelter for the family. The tale is not really a horror story but more a survival tale, similar to John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The War of the Worlds with the blend of mass social paranoia, fear and anxiety over the population.

The book does as you may expect have richer detail of the character point of view, their thoughts and reactions to the building terror of the outbreak of the mysterious vesp creatures which decimate towns and cities and begin to travel across land and eventually overseas in a matter of days. You do get to know Ally and her father and family well over the four hundred or so pages as you follow them through trauma and sadness and read how this changes and challenges their family dynamic.

I was interested to see what changes had been made (as there usually always are changes, especially for Hollywood adaptations of books) for cinematic reasons. The book focuses on main characters who live in the UK and travel up toward Scotland. In the film, they are based in America and they simply travel across the country to look for a safe place. With the film being only one hour and a half it did skip forward after just ten or so minutes, moving quickly over some long sections of the book. Some parts are condensed, some changed slightly to build up the sense of drama on screen-I assume. Generally though, it does remain mostly the same to the book storyline, the acting from Stanley Tucci, Kiernan Shipka (lead of the new kooky and creepy Sabrina the teenage witch Netflix series) and others is all good and there are some strong memorable scenes, some new to the film. The family communicating with sign language was acted really well I thought. The main dramatic final sequence in the cottage with the vesp attack did work which I was almost doubtful about prior. The ending is slightly different to the book, possibly setting up a sequel. Though some were not impressed I would suggest that you watch it if you like suspense thrillers, Hitchcock movies, monster movies.

James Parsons is author of two science fiction/SF books – Orbital Kin- a scifi mystery thriller and Minerva Century- a far future cyborg space opera epic. Also his first horror novel Northern Souls set in and around the North East of England. All three are available as paperback & ebook now from Amazon, Waterstones and your friendly dependable independent bookshops.

Midnight Special(2016)-Film Review

I’m steadily going through a few films from the last few years which I have missed but have cropped up on Netflix. This was one of those films. It was from director Jeff Nichols, who has now made a number of very acclaimed and respected films and it was his second to feature the actor Michael Shannon.

It had been a while since I had thought about watching it and I only vaguely remembered that it was in some way possibly a science fiction movie. This was right but not very much like most sci-fi movies you might see.

It starts quickly with two men going on the run with a young boy-who seems oblivious-driving at night while at the same time the FBI bust into a large rural church gathering and round up the people there. In the car with the two men, the calm young boy wears swimming goggles at night and reads a comicbook by torchlight until they have to turn off the headlights and the driver puts on night-vision goggles so that they can drive unseen. Yes, very strange indeed.

Soon after this the film slows down while the two men, one played by Michael Shannon is the boy’s father, continue their journey to get the boy to a specific destination in a few short days before the FBI can reach them. Is the boy really his son? What do the FBI want? What were the church doing with the boy?

The film quickly threw up these and other questions. It seemed like it may have actually simply been a tense kidnap or abuse drama story but then a very sci-fi thing happens suddenly with the boy and we see that something really strange and fantastic is going on and there is a whole lot more to the story.

Soon enough the film feels like a mysterious episode of The X-Files or an X-Men film but it continues to maintain a tense emotional hold on the viewer. They meet up with the boy’s mother and soon Father, Mother and close friend all struggle with what they should be doing and what is the right thing for the boy.

In some ways I thought it may have been a bit more standard chase/thriller film with the cops/FBI on their tale and very predictable but thankfully that mostly was not the case. Most of the visual effects are really good, certainly the end of the film. It may not be the most original sci-fi movie all the way to the end but it become quite a philosophical story which raises a number of questions about faith, guilt, alien contact, families and more.

A good science fiction film with some challenging emotional and philosophical depth.

James E. Parsons has two SF books out now-Orbital Kin & Minerva Century both available from Waterstones, Amazon, Barnes&Noble and other bookshops and online in paperback and ebook now.

 

Ghost In The Shell (2017)-Film Review

Yes this live-action adaptation of the anime sci-fi cyberpunk 90’s classic was released at cinemas many months ago but I missed it back then. I was given a copy of it for Christmas and so now I have seen. There was a few reasons why I didn’t catch it back at the cinema months ago, and one of those reasons may have been due to the slightly uncomfortable issue of ‘Whitewashing’ in the film which very many people were critical about. Why did it star Scarlett Johansson? Did it need to have her? It is seen as an American movie-did it have to be? Could it not have been Japanese made with full Japanese cast of actors?

There were several arguments around these issues of the film production-why was the lead character played by a white American actor? But then the response was that the character of Major Mira Killian was not specifically Japanese in the original manga or anime and was possibly wearing a body and also is a cyborg so she could be created in any visual design way. And on it continued.

So yes, that all may have put me off seeing it or paying my money at the cinema which may have been endorsing this kind of possibly Americanisation of original Japanese entertainment. I could understand it in other ways as well-Scarlett Johansson was at the time of production possibly the highest paid Hollywood actress/female actor due to her role as Black Widow in the Marvel movies, which is a similarly well trained, highly physically capable heroic character so it does right in that sense. Plus, they would have thought it the best thing to have her in this film as it would possibly draw such a huge audience because of her.

So anyway, lets talk about the movie. I am also a big fan of the original anime film from the mid-90’s. If you already knew about it, you may have seen over time how frequently it had been stated that without Ghost in the Shell there may have been no The Matrix. That’s possibly true, as the Matrix trilogy especially the first film did seem to take so much visually and stylistically from this anime/manga classic. I did see the anime G.I.T.S. a couple of years after Matrix was released and I really was shocked at the similarities.

Besides the controversies of production, with this live-action version of G.I.T.S. what do we get? Is it a very close remake? Is it only inspired by the original anime?

Well this is where it did not do so well for me as it is not a total remake, or exact shot-for-shot live-action version but it does feature several very memorable scenes from the anime movie which look almost exactly the same (made extremely well) and the story uses some of the anime feature length story with some elements from episodes of the anime series as well. This resulted in a film which did not really give me a fascinating original new tale, but I mostly knew where it was going all of the way through to the end.

In some ways now I do actually regret not seeing it at cinemas or even on IMAX because along with the recent Blade Runner sequel this movie really does look absolutely mind-meltingly stunning visually. It gives us what Ridley Scott probably exactly wanted for the original Blade Runner all those years ago. It looks just like Scarlett Johansson is walking through that movie and you almost expect her to bump into Deckard on the neon-lit streets. It also contains some of the very best science fiction special effects I have seen in recent times when we seen Major taken apart, reconstructed, broken, her face opened out, other similar cyborg characters and robotic creations. They all look seamless and breath-taking.  These are different times for Hollywood with their international cinema audiences changing and evolving and so I can probably (cynically) understand the very international main actors cast around Johansson. This is no bad thing just different to the anime and does feel possibly forced. But then they added in Juliette Binoche who of course is really great and added a maternal bond element with the Major. Strangely they cast Japanese legend Beat Takeshi Kitano-which is fine, as he is a fantastic actor/director-but he has his own dialogue in Japanese and subtitled while no other characters do in the movie.

Another big difference is that this live-action adaptation is nowhere near as philosophically deep or profound as the anime original. I’ll be honest, I had to watch the original a good couple of times for so much of the philosophical theories and issues to sink in and absorb them. With this version, a thin level of the questions around humanity, the self, cyborg, A.I. and robotics are probed but not with too much depth. It would be wrong to have the script be exactly the same as the original but I did feel they could have worked on this more but then in many ways it still is a Hollywood movie aiming for as wide an international audience as possible.

This film is not a total let down. It is not as controversial as you may have been led to believe. If you have not ever seen the original anime or manga you will possibly really love it. You may wonder if it is a Blade Runner spin-off movie. I felt that it was also a little too short. If you have seen the anime movies and series or the manga go see this anyway because it is still very much worth seeing. It is not entirely perfect but it is still a really great new sci-fi movie which does begin to ask some questions about how robots, A.I. and technology may radically alter our lives in only a short time from now.

 

James E. Parsons is author of two SF books Orbital Kin & Minerva Century (a cyborg mystery in space) out now in paperback, ebook and hardback in all good bookshops and online. Also his first horror novel Northern Souls is out now in paperback/ebook.

Shellshock future:Ghost in the Shell live- action in cinemas

We are now at the end of March 2017. We are not yet hooked up or linked into the internet or web biologically or with some fusion of human body and wires or cables. Broadband connection has not entered into our internal cerebral consciousness just yet.

Over twenty years have passed since the now classic anime film Ghost in the Shell hit cinema screen, adapted from the manga comic book. Although of course inspired by the cyberpunk novels from William Gibson and Bruce Sterling and films like Total Recall and Robocop, Ghost in the Shell is arguably responsible for inspiring The Matrix trilogy and much of modern science fiction cinema ever since.

A live-action movie adaptation of this cyberpunk thriller has been a contentious idea for so many years. This was an almost perfect animated film, which pushed the visual boundaries and techniques of the medium at the time. To make a version with real actors and sets would almost be like a huge insult to the creators of this classic film.

Also like much science fiction be it in film or books, some of it has dated with the passing of two decades. The basic concept remains fascinating but any kind of inspired remake would be different in a number of ways.

For so much time Ghost in the Shell has been an animated film along with the other anime modern classic AKIRA which so many hardcore fans would defend and protect at all cost before ever wishing ever considering a live-action  remake. The questions of which actors would or should be which characters, which director could successfully take on the challenge?

Those questions are redundant now. The live-action version of Ghost in the Shell hits cinemas this weekend in the UK. We finally had international superstar Scarlet Johansson cast in the lead role of Major alongside a mix of American and Asian actors. What does it mean that a modern classic anime/manga story enlists a hugely popular American actress for the lead over an actor who comes from where the actual story originated? There has been much debated about this issue in the last year or so since during the movie production. Some people genuinely outraged at the choice of Johansson, others more accepting of her. Was she chosen for her acting or her previous similar role as Black Widow in the Marvel films? Was she picked simply because she is arguably the most famous or popular female actor in the world currently?

Putting this issue to one side perhaps the other more interesting aspect of this live-action version of Ghost in the Shell comes with the original being decades old now. The original ideas and visuals of what might be futuristic technology used by police and state now do look in some ways unbelievable and outdated. We may not exist in what we thought of as virtual reality in the early or mid-90’s but we do now have very sophisticated smart phones and computers with touch screen wifi, broadband, almost every month or so we have new devices which merge how  we use and interact with technology and the internet. It makes sense that a 2017 version of Ghost in the Shell we look even more advanced and altered than the previous film. Now that we know the future vision offered to us in the original is not what we have, but we have lived with this cyberpunk vision for years now and many of us have a kind of affectionate nostalgia for it in a similar way to the steampunk phenomenon. With this in mind, Johansson has even suggested in one magazine interview recently that the world of Ghost… is possibly a parallel version of our future or present. This is handy for sidestepping how a futuristic vision has aged alongside real technological progression.

However the live-action adaptation will be view on the big screens, it is still just one of a number of films and shows which has come from the original and continually influential movie.

 

James E. Parsons is a SF/Horror author. His books Orbital Kin and Minerva Century are available from Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes & Noble, WHSmith and all good bookshops as paperback, ebook and Hardback. His first horror novel will be published later in 2017.

Class-Doctor Who spin off series 2016-short review

Are you a huge Whovian? Been watching Doctor Who for decades, years or only just begun recently? What do you like most about the show? Have you seen any of the spin-off related show from over the years such as Sarah Jane Adventures or K-9?

At the end of 2016 we were taken to a familiar school in the world of Who over the years, Coal Hill academy. While there was a break from the Doctor and his own adventures last year, this location and a group of teenage characters came along to keep us entertained.

CLASS does come from the same place as Doctor Who (and even features him at the end of the first episode) but it is quite a surprisingly different show. This may have shocked or actually upset a great many people judging from the very mixed response in the last couple of months since it first aired in the UK on BBC3.

The eight episode series does have a loose story thread but starts with individual tales. This episodes are similar to quite a few Who episodes but edge closer to other sci-fi films and tv shows such as The Twilight Zone, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, X-Files and more. The series had been aired late night on Mondays on BBC1 due to the gore, blood, violence and occasional swearing at times.

A good few loyal Doctor Who fans may have been very surprised, and I know some have just not been impressed or happy with it at all. Why is this? It is really so bad?

Since Doctor Who successfully returned long-term in the mid-00’s and has been on the small screen ever since, the show creators have taken some inspiration and chances with that success at times, with casting, scripts and other projects. One successful early spin-off show which quickly gained a big fanbase was Torchwood. It was connected to Who and came from there but had its own set of characters and stories goin on separately. People loved that show and especially the lead character Captain Jack Harkness and his golden age Hollywood style adventure hero antics and fascinating sexuality. That show though did largely stay in the same area where the whole family could watch it together, all ages.

This probably does not really apply with CLASS. Your very small kids should not see most of this. I mean, its not as excessive as any actual 15 or 18 rated horror films but it does almost get to that level, almost. Some fans therefore may feel this betrayed where it comes from and what it should be coming from the world of Doctor Who.

This isn’t the main issue that most people have had with the show. Usually reactions I’ve read or heard take aim of the low or clichéd quality of the scriptwriting. Some thought the characters were terrible, just really predictable. Others may have commented on the acting.

For me personally, I actually did enjoy the series for most of the time and like a couple of people I know, I think it probably did get better toward the end. Some thought the opposite was true.

Well look, they couldn’t just go and make another Torchwood (though the fans have been waiting for that show to return for years now) and in a way it is like seeing a more naughty, offensive and slightly subversive part of the Doctor Who show where the lead character goes missing and the cameras turn to others around him, but for eight episodes.

I’m over twice the age of the young characters but I could mostly still believe them and understand their lives, even if sometimes maybe too tragic.

Like Doctor Who over the last decade and more it is brave at times to include people and issues relating to our modern times- gay characters, people of ethnic minority background, other countries and not have them simply be ‘joke’ characters but the ones we connect with and invest our interest in. But really the best character is Ms. Quill, who comes from Doctor Who and she acts like he ever rarely does. She is regularly aloof, obnoxious, sarcastic, funny, bored, self-interested even nasty. So then of course this all makes her very watchable and entertaining all the way through. And like the present Doctor at least, she is not young-well, she is probably middle aged at a push. While most of the series looks at each individual young character and their issues while some random wild alien invasion takes place, toward the end Miss Quill is revealed as a very interesting character.

The series comes to a highly dramatic and possibly OTT ending but this does probably leave things open for the show to return. If that will happen is yet to be confirmed. I would like to see the series return and maybe some of the flaws in the scripts and writing could be smoothed out with it next time.

 

James E. Parsons is a SF/Horror author. His SF books Orbital Kin & Minerva Century are available now from Waterstones, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, WHSmith, and other good bookshops. His first horror book is published later in 2017.

 

The Expanse-tv show review

In the last week or more I have managed to watch this new sci-fi show which thankfully just suddenly ended up on Netflix in the UK here. I had read about it many months ago, but there had been very little news about when it would come over here or on what television channel.

I had been aware that it is adapted from the hugely popular SF space opera book series from the last few years written by James S.A.Corey (which is actually two writers working together). Like that book series this seemed to be a very epic and complex story, weaving together a number of plots and characters.

In the last couple of years we have had a few mostly good quality new SF shows, often on SyFy channel. These included Continuum, Defiance and more recently Killjoys and Dark Matter. How would this show compare to these other recent successes? What would all of the fans of the book series it is based upon think of it?

I have not personally read the Expanse book series and so had no solid expectations or ideas of how the characters should look, act or what the show should look like. I do though write space opera-my latest published book is in that style- and I am a fan of the classic tales of that kind.

So what did I think? Well first of all, with just the first episode it looked very well made with high production values and good direction. The sets seemed to be on a big scale as if for a feature film and the visual effects seemed like something you would possibly see in a cinema. It started very well.

It soon gives us a space attack and mystery, and a small group of main characters are thrown together and left to desperately travel to safety in deep space. Somewhere else on colonised space habitat a tired detective begins to follow a trail which leads him toward some interesting but dangers people and places.

The show had the look and feel at times of the recent very popular Battlestar Galactica television reboot-quite realistic camerawork, fairly dark and gritty lighting often, desperate and tense situations. Sometimes though it has some lighter brief moments of humour and colour which remind of the cult hit Joss Whedon Firefly show.

This does look like the most visually impressive tv science fiction show for years, which is great and unusual to see on a small screen. For the most part, the writing is very good. The characters and acting do pull you in and you want to watch them interact and see where they go together and how. In some sense because the visuals do look so good, almost Hollywood sci-fi cinema level an slight difficult feeling arises as it feels like a film stretched over several hours and there are maybe a few times when it does drag just a bit.

Is it what I thought it would be? I may have been expecting something more like the ALIENS films due to the early photographs and pictures of this show in magazines and online. Was I let down? No, it was a very good show, which could hopefully continue and get even better as it does leave us with some intriguing new mysteries in space to be resolved. I also do have to say that the actor Thomas Jane -previously most well loved for his shot at a Punisher Marvel movie over a decade ago-here he is a fantastic character, so well worn in watchable.

I have recently seen the new trailer for season two of this show and so next year will reveal if it can keep going and give us even more great deep space action and thrilling adventure.

 

James E.Parsons is author of SF books Orbital Kin and Minerva Century-both available as paperback/ebook from all good bookshops internationally now.

 

 

Westworld-Friends are electric again…

Inspired by the cult 1970’s sci-fi movie written and direction by Michael Crichton-the man who also gave us Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain, this new HBO show was billed as the new event to step into the place of Game of Thrones.

It may not be the first seventies SF movie that comes to mind when considering an adaptation for small screen. Other cult movies films of that period to adapt could have included A Clockwork Orange, THX-1138, Zardoz (maybe…), Deathrace 2000, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Mad Max among others.

With the first released picture of this new Westworld tv show, it looked like something that might have come direct from cinema screens and Hollywood millions. There are a great number of very big cast name actors involved including Anthony Hopkins, Thandie Newton, Ed Harris, James Marsden, Evan Rachel Wood to name only the main players. Yes, the producers really were aiming to give us something very special and high quality this time. We were to believe this as well given that brother of Batman director Chris Nolan, Jonathan Nolan was (who co-wrote those Batman films) helped create this series and it had the huge guiding hand of J.J. Abrams.

So is it a good show? How much like the original cult movie is it?

Well right with the first episode you will quickly recognize many familiar visual elements and tropes seen in the film. You get the wild west theme park, we are shown that the cowboys are of course robots called Hosts. Like the film, at first it seems like a great place to spend some leisure time. Although with the show, we follow a different set of characters as the story moves along.

This was a slow burning series. There were some serious changes and unexpected switches from the movie to what we were watching here. At times it almost felt as if they may have taken things too far with the onscreen violence of various forms, as if it was just too much for what we remember the film as being, besides the last twenty minutes or so. Here it is like this series starts with the end of the movie and continues along that path but then goes on to explore and wide range of notions of violence as entertainment and what that means for us humans, why we sometimes seek that out and how it affects us.

Coming from J.J.Abrams and Jonathan Nolan many of us probably did expect to some extent some mysterious macguffins or long and unwinding narrative paths which could take many weeks to unravel and reveal strange truths-if they ever would. Yes, this is a challenging show regularly. After a couple of weeks many viewers were agreeing on social media how they were confused or perplexed in a number of ways by the often very vague and elliptical way characters would walk or scenes were cut suggesting a number of thing but not always obviously clear of meaning or the plot. But how often do we really want everything always spelled out to us in cinema movies or television like we are very small children with the smallest attention span?

This show does go way beyond the basic premise of the original movie, delving deeper into the existence of the theme park robot wild west characters. They do become conscious but why and how and for what reasons are held from us but very teasingly suggested episode by episode. There are some episodes where you really do have to pay very close attention or you will sudden be very confused or lost but stay with the show and I think I can say that you will probably be very rewarded and stimulated emotionally and intellectually.

We are challenged to ask questions about how we use modern technology, what we might do with artificial intelligence and super-realistic robots in our near future. These can actually be quite disturbing things to consider but with the whole series and the well chosen cast of actors we can look at some possible times of tomorrow and the challenges of our rapidly advancing technology and how we will live with it.

 

James E.Parsons is the author of SF novels Orbital Kin and Minerva Century, both available on Amazon and in various other well known and reliable bookshops internationally.

 

 

More human than human…Robots on television in 2016

Like my own new SF book, robots are in our thoughts and on our screens again…

We are getting close to the end of the year soon, Halloween in a couple of weeks, and all kinds of plastic creepy and kooky merchandise in the stores. But this is a good time for the small screen and tv shows return after their summer breaks and new shows land with promises of all kinds of unusual entertainment.

Here we are after summer and a couple of weeks ago the increasingly anticipated television reboot/adaptation of the 1970’s sci-fi classic movie Westworld had begun on Sky Atlantic. As the global success of fantasy swords and dragons epic Game of Thrones nears the end, this show has hopes to take its place if viewers show an interest toward the interaction between man and machine mankind.

Did you see the original movie at cinemas decades ago? Personally I finally watched it just perhaps half a dozen or more years ago. It has dated, and does seem quaint most of the way through now, right up until the end. The last twenty minutes or so are still very much pretty disturbing viewing as the almost unstoppable psychotic robot played by Yul Brynner stalks onward on the kill.

The new show, of course intends to last for at least a whole series (probably a couple more) and so sets up the tale in a slightly fresh angle, flipping around the characters and who we identify with as viewers this time. It also intends to explore just how real the cowboy robots might be, and how the humans interact with them. The original movie was a long time ago now, but adapting it to television at this present time could be a real prescient move, as it connects up with the rapidly increasing advances in robot technology around the world and our actual genuine concerns and fears around this.

 

Just a few weeks after this intense and all-star Hollywood cast sci-fi show, we see the return of a series which was possibly surprisingly popular to some. UK Channel4 series Humans makes a return-the first series turned out to actually be the most successful drama on the channel for two decades. A much smaller budget than Westworld, but arguably an even more emotionally challenging and stimulating show which focuses on a group of ‘synths’ (robots) used and built for domestic purposes but who begin to regain their original conscious memories and come together to escape being captured and ‘turned off’. This show was very much a family drama which just happened to contain robot characters portrayed in very realistic ways, and was then very engaging and a must-see show. With the obvious building popularity, the producers did soon announce a second series but how this will play out can mostly only be guessed at this stage. Does the show really much more to say? Was the one original series enough?

If you do just a brief search on the net, you will find that more and more varied kinds of robots are being built globally for many different reasons. We really will see them much more involved in our daily lives in the next few decades, but how we will react to them is something which it seem we are all very interested in finding out.

James E.Parsons is an author of science fiction/horror and more. His latest SF book Minerva Century was published this summer, is available from all good bookshops including Waterstones, Amazon, WHSmith, Foyles, Barnes&Noble as paperback, ebook and hardback. His previous book Orbital Kin is also available.

To leave Earth-Minerva Century thoughts

The countdown has now begun. There are just weeks until my new science fiction/speculative fiction book Minerva Century is published.

This is a new story which looks at a possible time in future when humankind has left this planet, relocated to another, and we have changed ourselves and where we are, and why we are.

If we were to really leave our Earth, in big numbers-say hundreds or thousands of people at a time, or even more than this-how would we do this, and why would we do it?

There are a number of specific business people and individual corporate entities right now attempting to take small numbers of regular, willing individuals who are will to pay the price on brief journeys into near space with mixed results.

Very many sci-fi tales over more than a century now have considered where mankind might go in outer space, which planets we would make our own first. I would hope to think that I am not a pessimistic person, but what do you think might be the main thing which would finally make us leave this planet? Would we be leaving for good, progressive reasons or actually could it be that some terrible or horrific event or change in global cultures, economies, technologies might provoke us to escape?

The new SF book Minerva Century from James E.Parsons is published at the end of June, in paperback, ebook and hardback from all good booksellers. His first book Orbital Kin is available now.

Minerva Century -New SF Book News 2

My second science fiction book to be published is due in print soon, and this one-titled Minerva Century-probably sits in the SF subgenre called space opera.

The story follows Dale and Cathy, two characters from Earth but now like so many others, many decades later living either on the space stations or new adopted human planet Minerva.

My first book Orbital Kin was some kind of dystopian sci-fi thriller perhaps, and was influenced by books and films such as I am Legend, 28 Days Later, 2001, the works of J.G.Ballard, Philip K Dick to name only a few.

This new book has been influenced by books such as Frank Herbert’s Dune, the works of Isaac Asimov, films including the Terminator movies, Robocop, Mad Max series, Arthur C. Clarke.

This book is set much further into our future, where mankind has left planet Earth, found a new home planet and named it Minerva. Political and social ways have changed, adapted. Our known cultures and societies reformed, made a kind of peace, and come together to explore the wider galaxy.

Things never remain perfect for too long. Mankind may have learned from the colossal mistakes made on Earth over centuries, but in space there are still some dangerous things which wait and move around, the paranoia, uneasy and carefully structured harmony soon to be threatened once again.

The story explores our faith in technology, our pursuit of understanding our place beyond Earth, identity, addiction, our use and abuse of technology and more.

Watch here for the next part of this Minerva Century introduction.

 

James E.Parsons is author of science fiction novel Orbital Kin, available now as paperback/ebook from all good bookshops and online retailers.