Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that it’s an article about Carl Sagans SciFi side and it doesn’t mention that he’s the one who suggested the aliens in 2001 be just a big monolith without form. Also arguably a better sci-fi film (and more cerebral?) than Contact.

I love Contact myself but it was clearly not exceptional. I’d rate it comparably to 2010, 2001’s sequel.

For me it’s banalaity arises from its following of the one sci-fi trope that always disappoints me - the existence of an unexplained force/alien/species/molecule that transcends known physics as the main plot point. Pretty much every sci-fi show movie novel has this component and I’m just tired. The only two movies I know that don’t have it are the Martian and Gattaca. Those are the exceptional sci-fi works if you ask me.

PS: please don’t mention the moon, I hope we can keep the discussion to sci-fi works that are logically consistent at the least.

What’s wrong with the movie Moon?

What’s wrong with trying to transcend known Physics, there are so many things we don’t know, so speculating / imagining what is still unknown is part of sci-fi (as long as it’s not fantasy like the space mushroom network in Star Trek Discovery - which is not Star Trek anymore anyway)

And talking about logical consistency… Martian is good, but it had parts in it that were questionable, so I don’t understand why you’re not applying your same standards you used for Moon to the Martian.

Nothing fundamentally wrong with a fantastical element, but the issue then is that the story essentially splits into 3, among the politics and human stories, the actual science parts, and the fantastical parts. Often the science parts take third place and I also think it’s a cop out story wise. I still love me some Expanse and Firefly and Star Wars.

Yes, Expanse is great.

Btw, I was talking about this sci-fi:

Moon

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/

Not sure we're talking about the same movie.

I did mention the Same Moon as well. It’s a dumb idea that makes no sense. It’s only less dumber than battlestar galactica though lol.

Rating Martian and Gattaca above Contact?

We clearly have very different tastes.

Absolutely. In my interpretation Contact is as unscientific as it gets. In the end it’s another dumb equivocation to the need of religion and faith.

The advanced species went through all this bs just to explicitly make their story as unbelievable as possible? They couldn’t allow any proof to be taken back? What was the point exactly then? They were so advanced but couldn’t see human fallibility?

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