It's been quite a while since I've blogged. So many things have happened, and at the same time, nothing has changed. Such is life. Though I also really haven't felt like sharing my thoughts and feelings for quite some time now. Just the way things have been for me.

Anyhow, I really can't stop thinking about the movie Sunshine... and that's probably because I've been listening to the soundtrack non-stop for the past few days now. With the movie in limited release, I guess it was a stroke of luck that I found that the Palm Theatre in SLO was showing it. (And thanks to Steve for letting me know!) Anyway, after a few abortive attempts to watch it with a certain special friend, I nearly gave up. Until Steve let me know that he was going to watch it again, with a few friends from high school. I met up with them and really enjoyed the movie. And it was also good to see everyone again. Anyway, that was quite a while ago, maybe back in August.

Critics will pan the movie because of its supposed bad science, such as: the premature death of the Sun, vacuum exposure effects, the presence of artificial gravity, and the size of the stellar bomb vs. the Sun. I'm normally a stickler for hard science in science fiction, but I found the movie plausible enough to enjoy. And in fact, I found the depictions of science to be reasonable. It was never mentioned in-movie, but the reason for the premature death of the Sun was due to it capturing a Q-ball... or dark matter. I thought this was a neat explanation because it reminded me of Baxter's Xeelee Sequence, where dark matter beings — the Photino Birds — would take up residence in stars, causing them to age and darken prematurely.

Artificial gravity I just chalked up to technology. Hey, 50 years in the future is quite a bit of time for technological progress, especially at the exponential or near-exponential rate of advance we have going. Same with the bomb. It was obviously not nuclear, despite being constructed of every last bit of fissile material on the Earth. So who knows what principles it operated on. All it takes is a little suspension of disbelief...

Anyway, what fascinated me was the people. Here we have a crew of 8, all alone in space, with the monumental task of saving all life on Earth from extinction. How do they cope with the pressure? Well, of course some do and some don't. A few pick up obsessive hobbies, like sunbathing, reading the same book over and over again, or constantly listening to solar winds. And of course, the movie is about the second attempt. Obviously, the crew of the first ship failed... what lead to their failure? Was it technological? Or some human element?

But what also hooked me was the soundtrack, composed by John Murphy and Underworld. The music that played during the first climactic scene (with Captain Kaneda on the solar shield) left my jaw on the floor when the scene concluded. It was just so intense and so epic. (It's entitled "What do you see?")

Anyway, ending this entry with a quote from Jeffrey Sinclair of Babylon 5 seems apt:

“Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes... and all of this... all of this... was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars.”