In Loki’s Ring, the inciting incident that kicks off a series of characters’ journeys and adventures is an artificial intelligence named Ri on board. Ri and her ship have crashed on a ringworld, the titular Loki’s Ring. …
Happy New Year to all our followers from the Skiffy & Fanty blog team! … Please let us know if there are things in 2024 that you are particularly looking forward to, or if there are any topics or features you’d like to see here on Skiffy & Fanty.
If you missed Rosalind’s Siblings when it was published in September 2023, please consider adding it to your reading list for the new year. It’s a very interesting anthology of speculative fiction and poems, containing some fascinating ideas and characters and some really beautiful language.
… [The] majority (even those that might be set around Christmas) are really about solstice, that moment when the sun stops on its journey across Earth’s skies to change course. As many traditions of modern Christmas celebration are really appropriation and secularization of more ancient pagan festivities, several stories could be seen from either or combined perspectives.
Godzilla Minus One is exceptional, a movie worth seeing even if you haven’t seen Godzilla or aren’t a general fan of the countless sequels. Writer and director Takashi Yamazaki does the best job imaginable in balancing art and entertainment in his movie, infusing it with both thematic depth and relatable emotion.
Niccol’s films, almost universally, are obsessed with the idea of artificial realities. This can be a mundane sort of affair … Or it can be something like S1m0ne, where an actress and her whole career and presence, are digital creations. It is notable that Niccol is a cautionary tale sort of director. In each of these, the artificial realities break or are broken, showing the cogs and the gears of what is behind them.
