altered carbon

Just started watching this, it's so damn good to see some honest to god cyberpunk on screen!

Check it out, is my advice!

;D

For anyone not used to reading Tands obtuse posts, it is a TV series.

Cheers

Ian

Looks pretty cool.....

I don't watch too much tv but I'd check out a movie of it.......

Altered Carbon is beautifully shot and produced, and has some brilliant world-building. I absolutely love the book, and was thrilled to see how closely they adapted it - though the plot does veer away from the book in a few key respects, they’re generally sensible adaptations to the format. I did feel there were some clunky bits later on which I won’t go into because, well, spoilers and all, but overall I would heartily recommend both the show and (in particular) the book to anyone who likes a bit of hardboiled noir with their dystopian sci-fi!

I watched the trailer and thought "chick show"... Is it really that good?

TwentyTrees said:

but overall I would heartily recommend both the show and (in particular) the book to anyone who likes a bit of hardboiled noir with their dystopian sci-fi!

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That's me!  ;D

"They set a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT.

He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco façade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel.

Because he had a good agent, he had a good contract. Because he had a good contract, he was in Singapore an hour after the explosion. Most of him, anyway. The Dutch surgeon liked to joke about that, how an unspecified percentage of Turner hadn't made it out of Palam International on that first flight and had to spend the night there in a shed, in a support vat.

It took the Dutchman and his team three months to put Turner together again. They cloned a square meter of skin for him, grew it on slabs of collagen and shark-cartilage polysaccharides. They bought eyes and genitals on the open market. The eyes were green. "

- William Gibson, Count Zero

living sounds said:

I watched the trailer and thought "chick show"... Is it really that good?

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Hard to tell..... I liked the movie Source Code with Jake Gyllenhaal.....and I like some  sci fi.....Minority Report was pretty decent to me..... I've seen some not so good stuff too... But I'm not usually one of the cool kids so, I probably wouldn't know .....

But I love me some Dark Techno and am not the biggest fan of Future House so go figure......

I'm most of the way through and liked it. I read Neuromancer by Gibson a long time ago and remember liking it a lot. I should get count zero. They are part of a series?

I also liked Bladerunner 2049 a lot, watched it a few weeks ago.

dmp said:

I'm most of the way through and liked it. I read Neuromancer by Gibson a long time ago and remember liking it a lot. I should get count zero. They are part of a series?

I also liked Bladerunner 2049 a lot, watched it a few weeks ago.

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Yes, Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, which I think is my favorite. I can definitely recommend reading all of them, I liked them all. I was disappointed in Blade Runner 2049 though, it looked fantastic, but I got a bit bored. Ghost in the Shell with Scarlett Johannsen I liked better, even though it got a little sentimental toward the end. 

living sounds said:

I watched the trailer and thought "chick show"... Is it really that good?

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It's really that good, they probably made the trailer to appeal to chicks instead of portraying the show honestly for some garbage marketing reason.

Ok, I'll have a look.  8) Thanks.

Those William Gibson books stand up well despite being cutting edge scifi quite a few years ago

I can recommend The Difference Engine, cowritten with Bruce Sterling, which is predicated on the Victorians having succeeded in completing Babbage's mechanical computer. It's a great flight* of fantasy

* Read the book and you'll see what I did there...

Nick Froome

I've watched 2 1/2 episodes now.

So far the show reminds me more of 90s sci-fi cyberspace shows like TekWar than Blade Runner. Looks 90s rather than 80s in  many ways. Acting is a little wooden, characters I find not all that convincing.

But I'll watch some more...

It's pure grade A cyberpunk, though, I'm elated to see that. Did you ever see 'Johnny Mnemonic'? Talk about wooden acting.  :  ;D

pvision said:

Those William Gibson books stand up well despite being cutting edge scifi quite a few years ago

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'Parker lies in darkness, recalling the thousand fragments of the hologram rose. A hologram has this quality: Recovered and illuminated, each fragment will reveal the whole image of the rose. Falling toward delta, he sees himself the rose, each of his scattered fragments revealing a whole he‘ll never know – stolen credit cards – a burned out suburb – planetary conjunctions of a stranger – a tank burning on a highway – a flat packet of drugs – a switchblade honed on concrete, thin as pain.'

-William Gibson, Reflections of a Hologram Rose

Watched the entire season. It did not get better. IMHO lot's of soapy and operetta style drama, unnecessary gore and violence, bad acting, convoluted eclectic storyline. Everything happens calculated to maximum emotional impact. Filled with bad 90s TV show plots, campy 90s "cyberspace" looks and well-worn tropes (like blood running out from under a closed door) . Chick show, too. Ill-conceived representation of technological future. Pulp.

It's got nothing to do with the overall them. I like The Matrix a lot (first movie, the rest are crap)  and Blade Runner is one of my favourite movies.  Even liked the new Blade Runner.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but in an effort of lighting  a candle than lamenting darkness here are some suggestions for high quality shows:

The Expanse
Mr Robot
Stranger Things

These might also be interesting:
Travellers
The OA
Dark
The man in the high castle (based on a Phillip K. Dick novel like Blade Runner)

Have you read Gibson??

I thought Stranger things was way too derivative and limp, Winona Ryder was the only good thing about it. And Man in the High Castle, talk about a soap Opera. Man in the High Castle was Based on the PKD novel Man in the High Castle, Blade Runner was based on his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and neither one was one of his best.

Don't claim you're in any position to be lighting any candles for me, buddy, if you liked Man in the High Castle better. There's no accounting for taste, or the lack of it.

tands said:

Have you read Gibson??

I thought Stranger things was way too derivative and limp, Winona Ryder was the only good thing about it. And Man in the High Castle, talk about a soap Opera. Man in the High Castle was Based on the PKD novel Man in the High Castle, Blade Runner was based on his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and neither one was one of his best.

Don't claim you're in any position to be lighting any candles for me, buddy, if you liked Man in the High Castle better. There's no accounting for taste, or the lack of it.

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Well, I thought Man In The High Castle was OK. The Expanse, Mr. Robot and Stranger Things were great. Yes, Stranger Things is retro, but within that framework it is incredibly well crafted and creatively written.

Not everything comes down to taste, quality can be assessed objectively, at least to a certain degree.

But really, for great scifi, watch The Expanse.

Watched Alien: Covenant recently and really liked it. Not into the horror but the story line was petty good. I didn't like Prometheus when I first saw it because of some dumb dialog and people doing the dumbest thing possible at key moments, but now I get what was going on, the people are written the way they are to serve the plot. Don't want to give too much away though.

Also, movie called "mute" just released on Netflix is pretty similar to Altered Carbon. Watched it last night and it was pretty good.

Amazing what CGI can do now and how much content is being produced. Did you know for every membership Netfilx loses like $90? Amazing.  The more subscribers they add the more money they lose.

....beserker...