I wonder if there’s any psychology behind responses to this question… While I genuinely love the idea of becoming a cyborg, the thought of becoming part of a collective that thinks as one is kinda horrifying to me as someone who works in a creative field.
It’s something that really winds me up about scifi shows, and I know there are always budget restrictions… but it just feels really lazy to me, for aliens to be simply humans with plasticine on their foreheads.
I’m reading one of Iain M. Banks’ ‘Culture’ series of hard scifi books, the depth and variety of not just alien species but ‘post-human’ modification is breathtaking. ‘The Culture’ is a far-flung hyper-technological society, no money, all wants and needs provided for, there are no drugs because everyone has their own drug gland. If you decide you want to try changing sex, off you go, the nanosuite will take care of it within a matter of days. Sick of being a humaniform? No problem, now you’re the bush-like bundle of tendrils of your dreams. Bored with being a bush? Maybe you want to download your consciousness into a drone, or the solar sail drive of a starship? Again, no problemo!
Hyperion explored that a bit. An incredibly wealthy character in the book makes himself into a Satyr. We are Legion (We are Bob) also has some really fun stuff with android host machines. The Bobs can be anything they want to be. The movie Arrival did an amazing job depicting non-humanoid aliens. But yes, most sci-fi is very lazy with the aliens.
For some reason, I only got the alert for your reply today!
I adore the Hyperion Cantos, it’s one of my favourite scifi book series ever, and I hope one day it gets the TV treatment it deserves. Always felt it would make an amazing show.
Yeah man, some of the coolest concepts I’ve ever read were in that series. The crusader’s ship that fucking demolishes their bodies from hyper acceleration and then rebuilds them during flight, all without their knowledge, was wild! My biggest fear about it being a series is that idk if there’s a way to create the Shrike in a live action recreation without making it look cheesy. The Shrike definitely benefits from the fogginess in the theater of the mind.
Yeah they’d have to do a LOT of R&D to make sure the Shrike looks suitably terrifying. The speed of it wouldn’t be a problem, they could get all the people who worked on The Flash!
I’ve been pleasantly surprised with TV versions of late. I didn’t watch Foundation until S02 dropped, I just saw no way they could do a show set over aeons. They’ve taken a lot of artistic license and I’ve heard from many who loved the books saying they’re unhappy with that, but I really enjoyed it. Three Body Problem season one was also fantastic, so fingers crossed that gets a second season (apparently it was very expensive to make so S01 may be all we get unfortunately).
I couldn’t get past the first few episodes of The Foundation. I’m one of those people who read the books who wasn’t happy with what they did for the show. It did look beautiful though, absolutely amazing.
Three Body Problem was excellent. They had a budget of 20 or 30 million dollars per episode though. I’ve been thinking about watching the Chinese version to see how it ends, since that version is finished, but I doubt they can make a show look as good as the Netflix one. The only part of that show that I didn’t like was Augie. Man, that’s the worst character I’ve ever seen. Not only is she terribly written, but she’s a terrible actor, and terribly miscast. The most unbelievable part of that show was that Augie would have any friends, and it’s a show about outer space aliens! LOL. But overall I really enjoyed the show. I watched the entire season in two days.
Borg for me.
I wonder if there’s any psychology behind responses to this question… While I genuinely love the idea of becoming a cyborg, the thought of becoming part of a collective that thinks as one is kinda horrifying to me as someone who works in a creative field.
Who did the Borg assimilate before they met the humans? Every Borg looks like an assimilated human.
Every sentient species looks like a human into body modification.
And yeah, there is a storyline about all sentient species being related.
It’s something that really winds me up about scifi shows, and I know there are always budget restrictions… but it just feels really lazy to me, for aliens to be simply humans with plasticine on their foreheads.
I’m reading one of Iain M. Banks’ ‘Culture’ series of hard scifi books, the depth and variety of not just alien species but ‘post-human’ modification is breathtaking. ‘The Culture’ is a far-flung hyper-technological society, no money, all wants and needs provided for, there are no drugs because everyone has their own drug gland. If you decide you want to try changing sex, off you go, the nanosuite will take care of it within a matter of days. Sick of being a humaniform? No problem, now you’re the bush-like bundle of tendrils of your dreams. Bored with being a bush? Maybe you want to download your consciousness into a drone, or the solar sail drive of a starship? Again, no problemo!
Hyperion explored that a bit. An incredibly wealthy character in the book makes himself into a Satyr. We are Legion (We are Bob) also has some really fun stuff with android host machines. The Bobs can be anything they want to be. The movie Arrival did an amazing job depicting non-humanoid aliens. But yes, most sci-fi is very lazy with the aliens.
For some reason, I only got the alert for your reply today!
I adore the Hyperion Cantos, it’s one of my favourite scifi book series ever, and I hope one day it gets the TV treatment it deserves. Always felt it would make an amazing show.
Yeah man, some of the coolest concepts I’ve ever read were in that series. The crusader’s ship that fucking demolishes their bodies from hyper acceleration and then rebuilds them during flight, all without their knowledge, was wild! My biggest fear about it being a series is that idk if there’s a way to create the Shrike in a live action recreation without making it look cheesy. The Shrike definitely benefits from the fogginess in the theater of the mind.
Yeah they’d have to do a LOT of R&D to make sure the Shrike looks suitably terrifying. The speed of it wouldn’t be a problem, they could get all the people who worked on The Flash!
I’ve been pleasantly surprised with TV versions of late. I didn’t watch Foundation until S02 dropped, I just saw no way they could do a show set over aeons. They’ve taken a lot of artistic license and I’ve heard from many who loved the books saying they’re unhappy with that, but I really enjoyed it. Three Body Problem season one was also fantastic, so fingers crossed that gets a second season (apparently it was very expensive to make so S01 may be all we get unfortunately).
I couldn’t get past the first few episodes of The Foundation. I’m one of those people who read the books who wasn’t happy with what they did for the show. It did look beautiful though, absolutely amazing.
Three Body Problem was excellent. They had a budget of 20 or 30 million dollars per episode though. I’ve been thinking about watching the Chinese version to see how it ends, since that version is finished, but I doubt they can make a show look as good as the Netflix one. The only part of that show that I didn’t like was Augie. Man, that’s the worst character I’ve ever seen. Not only is she terribly written, but she’s a terrible actor, and terribly miscast. The most unbelievable part of that show was that Augie would have any friends, and it’s a show about outer space aliens! LOL. But overall I really enjoyed the show. I watched the entire season in two days.
YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED (but only if you are bipedal)