Romans 5:7-9

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Icons of the Science Fiction Genre

Star Trek - The Transporter
In 1966 Gene Roddenberry and crew astonished the world with the some-what campy popularized sci-fi TV series that introduced us all to the idea of instantaneous travel through space by reducing our bodies to individual molecules and "transporting" them to another location.
2001 A Space Odyssey - HAL
Two short years later, Stanley Kubrick in his enigmatic way, lured sci-fi fans into a universe of endless possibilities. In this movie, one frightening character turned out to be the on-board computer which happened to value his "life" as much as the life of those humans he was created to aid.
Star Wars - The Death Star
In the epic sci-fi universe of Star Wars, the Empire's greatest and most destructive weapon was that one which resembled a small moon. A space station that destroyed the planet of Alderaan, from which Princess Lea was rescued, and which was destroyed itself, the first time, by the swift pilot (new to the Rebellion) from Tattooine—Luke Skywalker.
Blade Runner - Replicants
In this seminal 1982 detective style sci-fi movie, the last several androids (called Replicants), who had been created with a 4 year life-span rebelled against their place in the world.
Tron - Discs
In a world of computers, Tron showed us there was a world in computers. One in which the avatars of computer programmers are prisoners who have to compete in deadly digital games for their preservation. In one of these games the players throw their discs at one another to try and eliminate their opponent.
The Terminator -The Terminators
In 1984 Arnold Schwarzenegger showed us just how "user-friendly" a computer could be.
Dune - The Spice Melange
With a star-studded cast, visionary David Lynch carefully translated Frank Herbert's novel into a sci-fi epic film in which the mysterious natural resource referred to as "The Spice" was both, the source of war in the universe, and the catalyst for life.
The X Files - EBE
For 9 years sci-fi fans were delighted by Chris Carter' monsters and conspiracies confronted by rouge FBI agents, Mulder and Scully. One of the main themes included the existence of EBEs - Extraterrestrial Biological Entites, or aliens.
Men in Black - Memory Eraser
Science fiction was never so funny than as resented by the characters played by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. The icon taken from this film is the devise used to conveniently, and sometimes gratuitously, erase the memories of unsuspecting humans completely unaware of the existence of extraterrestrials.
The Matrix -The matrix
Well, the primary icon from this trilogy was the matrix itself, the artificial construct devised by machines to suppress the reality of existence in the minds of the humans who created them.

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