A dark star is born

At Clearleft towers, we’ve been having semi-regular movie nights, based around a connecting theme. Previous themes include car chases (The French Connection, Bullitt and Ronin) and films set at Christmas that aren’t about Christmas (Gremlins and Die Hard).

Last week’s movie night’s theme was near-future science fiction. We didn’t get around to watching Minority Report but we did watch Children of Men and Sunshine.

is one of those films that gets better with each viewing. Little by little, it’s edging up my list of all-time favourites. It has a sense of awe, wonder and humility in the face of science that’s genuinely Clarkeian.

It also has plenty of loving references to those other films featuring the trifecta of sci-fi elements: a ship, a crew, a signal. The nods to 2001 and Alien are clear, but something I didn’t catch until just the other day was that the character of Pinbacker was named for Sergeant Pinback from .

I know this because, instead of our usual Thursday evening pub gathering and book swapping, the Brighton Speculative Fiction Group this week hosted a puppet show. Paul and Richard recreated all of Dark Star using cardboard, some string, a few dolls and some strategic lighting.

It was one of the best things I’ve ever seen. Here’s the highlight reel.

Have you published a response to this? :

Previously on this day

11 years ago I wrote Creative Commons Q&A

15 questions on Creative Commons.

12 years ago I wrote Outbound

I’m off to San Francisco. Again.

12 years ago I wrote Regional

You can’t play that here.

15 years ago I wrote Best. News story. Ever.

In his seminal 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell outlined some simple guidelines for writing. These include:

16 years ago I wrote Just plain wrong

Seeing windows apps running on OS X kind of freaks me out but not nearly as much as seeing what this guy did to a G5:

16 years ago I wrote Airport

An iChat transcript with my friend Diarmaid who I am supposed to be meeting in Dublin right about now:

18 years ago I wrote Please don't let me be misunderstood

There’s a magazine called "Cre@teOnline" which bills itself as "The Web Designer’s Bible".