Souls are extremely volatile at altitude

One of my favorite lines from the independent film Cold Souls starring Paul Giamatti. The basic premise? If your soul is weighing you down -- if you're feeling "stuck" -- a company called Soul Storage will extract it for you and then store it in a glass tube, as seen above. But that's not all. You can also have another soul inserted to see what that's like.

Part of what's so wonderful about this film is how seriously it takes this surreal premise and runs with it, yielding a delightful mixture of the mundane and the absurd, the profound and the ridiculous. Giamatti plays himself; he has his soul (which turns out to look like a chickpea) removed in the way one might try a new diet or exercise program or self-help strategy as a way to deal with one's suddenly unbearable life. Check out the exchange when he finally fesses up to his wife about what he's done, since he's behaving so strangely that she suspect he's having an affair:

Paul? Is there someone else?

No. For Chrissake, no. There isn't anyone else.

Well, I'm sorry, but things have been pretty strange round here recently. You smell different. You feel different. What am I supposed to do? Just watch you come in at dawn?

Honey, uh- Honey. If I were a different me... in the same body... would you still love me?

What are you talking about?

I have, uh, extracted and stored my soul. But now, uh... they've misplaced it. They don't know where the hell it is. It's a total nightmare. It's a total nightmare. It's a total- I can't - It's-It's the end of my career. And, uh- And it's-it's the end of us.

Why would you do that?

Eh- Uh- l-I don't - I just told you. I don't know! I don't know. I'm, uh- I don't know. Max told me that his mother-in-law did it. And then she told me that, uh-that Cynthia was thinking about doing it too.

Cynthia?

Yeah. What does it ma- Yeah, Cynthia- I just- I got- I got confused. I got confused. It was-It was just for two weeks. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

So, you're completely soulless right now?

What? No, no, no, no. Not exactly, no. I still have five percent of my soul.

Five percent?

But I rented the soul of a Russian poet.

You did what?

borrowed from an online transcript

Now, mainly I bring this to your attention because it's clever and creative and just a very different film. See it. However, it strikes me that it does fit into the conversation I have with many of my students about the soul. What does a soul do, after all? Once upon a time we thought that the soul was responsible for all life functions. Then it was just our higher cognitive and affective functions. Now those who still believe in the soul have to figure out what belongs to the soul and what belongs to the brain. The upshot is that this kind of dualism suggests that a soulless human being isn't a zombie but rather someone who's missing something -- but what, exactly? And do we need to keep hanging onto the soul when it seems to have less and less to do?

Random Bits: The Avatar Edition

I don't have a lot to say about Avatar that hasn't already been said by lots of people in lots of places. It goes without saying that it's visually stunning, although you'll still find a few folks who complain about the CGI. More than any other, this film manages to take us inside the world it creates. And I didn't even get to see it in 3D.

It's a simple and predictable story, but I don't object to that. My quarrel with the film has to do with its political message of the evils caused by the marriage of big business and the military. Cameron is pushing this so hard that it made me fall out of the story a few times. A story shouldn't be a mere vehicle for someone's agenda. Further, the villains would have been more interesting and more threatening if they were less stupid and banal. Still, I very much enjoyed watching the film and want to see it again. You, too? Until then, check out these items, most of which have been making their way around the sf blogosphere...

Some people love Avatar so much that they find real life depressing: Post-Avatar Depression Syndrome? Really, CNN?

If you want to know more about Pandora, check out the Pandorapedia (which includes a video narrated by Sigourney Weaver). There's even a (farfetched) story about why mountains can float.

Is Avatar a racist film? Some say so. Mark Mardell argues not (although it might be about the U.S.)

SF author China Mieville on Avatar

SF author Nancy Kress on Avatar

SF author John Scalzi on Avatar

SF Gospel weighs in on Avatar

From Failblog we get the inevitable observation that Avatar's plot sounds awfully familiar...

The Avatar-as-a-Dune ripoff video is also entertaining.

You have anything else to add to the mix?

Oh, and yes there will indeed be an Avatar and Philosophy volume.

More Random Bits

Thanks to io9 for pointing the way to Ryan Dunlavey's comic strip mashups, which "take popular genre characters from comics, sci-fi, and draw them in the style of a classic newspaper comic strip." Here's one example:

Jones Soda presents a limited edition Dungeons and Dragons Spellcasting Soda. Yes, really. I'm feeling a thirst for some Illithid Brain Juice myself.Have you met Gary the Cylon? If not, you should. There are at least 16 episodes, two of which I'll embed below. They're funny in their own right, but they also remind us how amazingly bad and painfully melodramatic the original BSG series could be. You can easily find the rest on your own.

Random Bits

Ursula Le Guin reviews Margaret Atwood's new novel The Year of the Flood. Included in the review is a wonderful discussion of Atwood's claim that her books are not science fiction. See the discussion at io9, to which I owe a tip of the hat.

Nnedi Okorafor provides an interestingly different take on District 9. Found this at SF Signal.

John Scalzi, author of Old Man's War and others, entertains us with his discussion of epic design FAILS in both the Star Wars and Star Trek. Also amusing are the various fan attempts to show Scalzi he is mistaken.

Check out the 9 most questionable Batman toys at Topless Robot. Especially the water pistol.

SF "news"

A very nice mock news piece on a sci-fi writer's use of "quantum flux" to solve all his plot problems. From the Onion, thanks to io9.

Also at the Onion you'll find the following other mock sf stories:

Science-Fiction Novel Posits Future Where Characters Are Hastily Sketched

Sullen Time-Traveling Teen Reports 23rd Century Sucks

Bush Cites The Last Starfighter As Inspiration For Entering Politics

Barnes & Noble Staffers Mock Orson Scott Card Crowd From Back Of Room

Scientists Abandon AI Project After Seeing The Matrix

Science Fiction: It's What's for Breakfast

I'm down with the whole "boldly going where no one has gone before" idea, but whoever came up with the idea of Star Trek waffles has gone too far. Didn't stop me from eating them, though.

On the other hand, I do want a Cylon toaster.Am I inconsistent?

We Are Wizard People

Brad Neely, creator of many very humorous (and very graphic and irreverent!) comics and videos, like the one to the right, has written an alternative script/commentary for the first Harry Potter film. Entitled "Wizard People, Dear Reader," it may be downloaded here. You may also experience it chapterwise on Youtube, with the Neely audio replacing the film's. It is awfully funny, in every sense of that word. Like his other stuff, this is quirky and may put off some folks. One nice bit is when Harry catches the Snitch and is looking 'round the stadium. Neely narrates him bellowing to the crowd, "I'm a beautiful animal. I'm a destroyer of worlds. I'm Harry F-ing Potter!" I'm embedding the first chapter here; you can find the others for yourself.



While we're thinking of all things Harry, you might also check out the documentary We Are Wizards (also found here). Neely shows up in it. And if you're like me, you'll hear way, way too much about the odd musical sub-genre known as "wizard rock." Harry and the Potters, anyone? The film opens with a dire voiceover warning about what'll happen to our children if they are exposed to Harry Potter, but most of the film is a fairly friendly look at Potter Fandom. It isn't until about 53 minutes in that we meet the Christian woman who voiced the warning. She's worried that "we're giving [our children] over to the dark world of vampires, lizards, serpents, half creatures, the dead..." And she's alarmed that the Harry Potter books are teaching our children magic. They don't have to go into the dark alleys to learn spells anymore, but can learn them in their clean and well-lit houses. Really? How many folks think this way? She's made a film about Harry Potter, too, that you can watch here (though I couldn't make it through).

Exploring any region of fandom (or its opposite!) shows us just how weird and obsessive we can be. Understandably, not everyone wants to be shown this.

A Hierarchy of Geeks

Want to figure out how big a geek you are?

My colleague Don Wacome passed this along to me.

Batman or Superman?

Who has the better story? Who's the most heroic? Who would win in a fight? What do you think? While you're ruminating, check out the following answer to our questions, in two parts:

Watch The Dark Knight Meets Superman and more funny videos on CollegeHumor

Watch The Dark Knight Meets Superman Part 2 and more funny videos on CollegeHumor

How to Survive an Alien Attack

Or I suppose one could adapt many of the strategies suggested in this, too.

Just for fun!

This is making the rounds. But you don't want to miss it.



Hat tip: SF Signal

And now I just have to add this one....

sf humor--Star Trek

With a new movie headed our way in May, why not take a few minutes to poke some fun at a beloved sf franchise? After all, we often make fun of the things we love, right?

Some folks have gone to an awful lot of work to produce this delightful series of videos (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) recording various mistakes in the continuity of the Star Trek universe. It's like a video version of the old Nitpicker's Guides, only with a bit more bite.

Spock vs. Q

Here's a moment from the wonderful episode of Futurama that's called "Where No Fan Has Gone Before." More clips here. You'll want to find the entire episode!

Courtesy of Robot Chicken! The Wrath of Khan: The Opera! And a fight at a sf convention. Then No Power. Finally, Bloopers in Space!

A real life Trek drama: Kirk vs. Sulu! William Shatner wonders why he wasn't invited to George Takei's wedding. Takei responds. And then Shatner counterattacks. It's hard to believe, but this all seems to be for real.

And if you haven't already seen it, you simply must watch Leonard Nimoy (Spock) singing "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins." Words cannot suffice.

Star Trek vs. Star Wars is kind of fun. And, predictably, there are lots of similar attempts out there, too.

Got something funnier? Post a comment and give us a link.

By the way, you can watch Star Trek: The Original Series at CBS.com.

Robots Will Take Over the World!

Many sf stories show us a future in which robots and other sorts of intelligent machines show their true colors--and their colors are evil! The HAL 9000 is classic, of course. And think of The Terminator, or The Matrix, or the original 1970's version of Battlestar Galactica. Of course, as these narratives unfold further, matters get more complicated. Arnold is a good guy in T2 and T3. Not all the sentient programs in the Matrix are bad. And the Cylons in the new BSG? Well, that's a really complicated story, isn't it?

Still, the idea of evil killer robots has a lasting appeal, so it's no surprise that some people have lots of fun playing with this idea. What's your favorite evil robot story?

Stickmen vs. Dinosaurs

Check out chaospet and Dinosaur Comics. Each site houses a long-running web comic that's often funny or philosophical or sf-ish or all three. As an example, here's each site's treatment of egoism...

Thinking Meat?

Philosophers often see problems and paradoxes in what look like ordinary places, whether by asking an unexpected question or by turning things on their heads. Terry Bisson's wonderful short story "They're Made Out of Meat!" is a hilarious philosophical exploration of the idea that we are material beings. That we are mere meat is an absurd idea -- according to a pair of extraterrestrial beings who are made of who knows what....

A surprising number of folks have been inspired to create short film versions of this story. See here 1 and here 2 and here 3 and here 4. Which one is the best?

sf humor--The Matrix

We often poke fun at what we love, whether it's a friend or a film. In that spirit, enjoy the following. Or complain that they aren't that funny. Either way.

How it should have ended. These folks have done similar endings for other films, most of which are worth watching...

Chappelle's spoof on The Matrix

Go here to watch "The Meatrix" and its sequels. I'm not sure about all that black leather being used in an animal advocacy compaign...

The Matrix Runs on Windows

The MTV awards spoof

Got any more? Post 'em in the comments section....