In 2013, when I heard that Iain M. Banks had passed away at the tragically young age of 59, I was devastated. As I wrote at the time, it’s always hard when a person who inspired you in life dies. But in the years since Banks’ death of terminal cancer, I’ve spent more time reading and re-reading his science fiction works, somehow uncovering new detail and surprises in each chapter. His epic Culture series is as impactful now as it was when he wrote his 1987 novel “Consider Phlebas.”
I’ve also been researching the man himself, learning about his motivations, political opinions and religious beliefs (or lack thereof) to find we share many of the same views about the state of the world. And recently, I came across his final “Raw Spirit” interview with Kirsty Wark of BBC Scotland that he did in the weeks before he died.
The interview is excellent and well worth the watch.
One discussion I found particularly poignant was at around the 35 minute mark when Kirsty asks Iain about his views on life elsewhere in the universe:
Iain M. Banks
There’s so many stars in the galaxy and there are so many galaxies … it seems highly unlikely there’s just us. It’s one of the things that I regret a great deal is that I’m not going to live long enough to see the results come in from the really good telescopes that we’re putting in space, in particular. They’ll actually be able to analyze the composition of exoplanets, their atmospheres, and be able to tell whether they’ve got life in them. You know exactly what the spectrum is of the star, as the star starts to slip behind the planet, the way the spectrum alters … will tell you how much carbon, how much oxygen, carbon dioxide and so on is in the atmosphere of that planet. It’s astounding to think we might know this in 10, 20 years. Yeah. It’s damned annoying! (laughs)
Iain’s views on life elsewhere in the universe are hardly surprising, especially considering all the alien civilizations he’d created through his decades of writing. And his point about detecting chemicals in exoplanetary atmospheres is rooted very firmly in science fact. I can’t begin to imagine his annoyance at knowing we’re only years away from probing alien atmospheres when his life was almost up. (For added poignancy, Iain hints that he has months left to live, but as indicated at the start of the interview, it turned out he was in his final weeks.)
I found Iain’s humor and energy inspiring in life, and despite facing his imminent mortality during this interview, he delivered some thought-provoking ideas and views with grace that will live on well beyond his death.
An image at radio wavelengths of a young stellar quadruplet. Credit: CfA/Nature/Pineda
825 light-years away, in the constellation of Perseus, hides one protostar and three previously unseen gas concentrations that are undergoing gravitational collapse — basically embryos of soon-to-be baby stars. Found through the analysis of data from radio telescopes by astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), this tiny cluster of baby stars occupy a small volume only 10,000 AU across — meaning that they’d all easily fit within the confines of the boundaries of our solar system (yes, the Oort Cloud is the solar system’s outermost boundary).
This is exciting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, this little ‘stellar womb’ has given astronomers an opportunity to study the genesis of a multi-star system. Indeed, most stars in our galaxy belong to multi-star systems, whether that be binary or greater, and astronomers are currently trying to figure out whether they were born this way or whether, over time, stars jostled around and eventually became gravitationally bound. After analysis of the velocities of the protostar and stellar embryos, it appears that the masses are gravitationally interacting. In other words, it has the potential to mature into a quadruple star system in around 40,000 years, a minute amount of time in cosmic timescales. Although it is likely that the system will become unstable, possibly ejecting one or two of the stars in the process, it does provide observational evidence that multi-star systems can be born in a gravitational embrace.
A map of the Twelve Colonies via io9.com
But as I have a habit of linking astrophysical studies with science fiction imaginings, when I first saw this research, I immediately thought of the awesome re-imagined series’ Battlestar Galactica and Caprica.
Battlestar Galactica is set in the years following the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, which almost wiped out humanity in this far-flung part of the galaxy. The remaining survivors, headed by William Adama (Edward James Olmos), take to the stars in a fleet of ragtag spaceships in search of the fabled Earth. One of my favorite scifi storylines and favorite scfi TV shows. But I digress.
The Twelve Colonies consist of four stars — Helios Alpha, Helios Beta, Helios Delta and Helios Gamma — each with their own systems of planets, 12 in total, including capital world Caprica.
So that poses a question: Just because Battlestar Galactica imagines a quadruple star system (well, two binary systems in a mutual orbit), is it possible to have such a stable system of planets evolve in a multi-star system? Or are the gravitational interactions too complex for anything to coalesce and slot into stable orbits? Well, by understanding how multi-star systems evolve by finding examples like this embedded inside star forming molecular clouds, we may start to appreciate how common and how stable they are and whether accompanying planetary systems are a reality or something that will forever be confined to the Twelve Colonies.
It’s always hard when a person who inspired you in life dies. And for me, there are only a handful of people beyond my circles of family and friends who have, in some way, shaped my thinking.
But through his novels, Scottish writer Iain Banks had such a powerful impact on my teenage years that he, in no small way, gave me a new appreciation for science fiction and in doing so helped me pursue a higher education in astrophysics. Sadly, as he announced with his trademark wit only two months ago, Iain had terminal gall bladder cancer and today has died at the heartbreaking young age of 59. He will be sorely missed by the fiction and science fiction communities — he was a plain-speaking, powerful voice in life and a skillful genius when describing the worlds he created on paper.
My signed copy of Iain M. Banks’ “Matter” — my mum sat in on one of Iain’s book readings in Bristol that I couldn’t attend and got a signed copy of the novel for me — one of my most precious books.
Now, I’m not the biggest of readers, but when you pick up an Iain Banks (a.k.a. Iain M. Banks for his science fiction novels) book, it’s hard to put down. His first science fiction novel Consider Phlebas introduced us to the epic Culture universe — a vast interstellar multi-species civilization, of which Earth and humanity had been enveloped. The very notion of a post-scarcity, pan-galactic race seemed to hit the sweet spot of my imagination, so I hungrily read all of Iain’s Culture series, feeling the very notion of what science fiction is change in my brain. In a particularly tumultuous period of my life, I took on Iain’s fictional writing too, reading the deeply unsettling The Wasp Factory.
Iain’s writing is a constant source of surprise to me — he has this unique ability to shock, enlighten and entertain while creating such a fine tapestry of plot twists and deep characters that you quickly become lost in his words.
But for me, Iain’s imagination forced the very limits of science fiction, expanding my thoughts on what is possible in our Universe. This is why, while struggling with mathematics in my undergraduate years at the University of Aberystwyth that Iain M. Banks’ work became a welcome escape. When I began questioning some of the fundamental ideas behind physics and developed a thirst for advanced and, quite frankly, unfathomable concepts in astrophysics, Iain’s books became a huge source of inspiration.
Although many facets of my life threw me on a course that would eventually see me tackle a PhD in coronal physics and send me on a life-changing trip to Hawaii and ultimately land me in California, with my beautiful wife Debra, 5 rabbits and a job with the task of communicating awe-inspiring space science to the world, Iain’s fictional universe has always been there, complementing my life in a very real way.
I will always remember Iain and will continue reading his novels so that inspiration endures beyond his death. People who inspire you are few and far between, so when someone changes the way you think through the medium of their writing, you should never let them go.
Goodbye Iain, the Culture will forever be my inspiration.
Assuming Star Trek‘s Borg Collective went into overdrive and decided to build a huge cube a few thousand miles wide, then yes, the exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope should be able to spot it. But how could Kepler distinguish a cube from a nice spherical exoplanet?
The big assumption when looking for exoplanets that drift between distant stars and the Earth — events known as “transits” — is that the only shape these detectable exoplanets come in are spheres. Obvious really.
As a world passes in front of its parent star, a circular shadow will form. However, from Earth, we’d detect a slight dimming of the star’s “light curve” during the transit, allowing astronomers to deduce the exoplanet’s orbital period and size.
The transit method has been used to confirm the presence of hundreds of exoplanets so far, and Kepler has found over 1,200 additional exoplanet candidates. But say if astronomers paid closer attention to the shape of the received light curve; spherical objects have a distinct signature, but say if something looked different in the transiting “planet’s” light curve? Well, it could mean that something non-spherical has passed in front of a star. And what does that mean? Well, that would be a pretty convincing argument for the presence of a huge planet-sized artificial structure orbiting another star. Artifical structure = super-advanced alien civilization.
Arnold tested his theory that all manner of shapes could be detected by Kepler, assuming the transiting structure was on the scale of a few thousand miles wide. In this case, Arnold was testing his hypothesis to see whether we could detect an advanced civilization’s “shadow play.” Perhaps, rather than beaming messages by radio waves, an advanced civilization might want to signal their presence — SETI style — by blocking their sun’s light with vast sheets of lightweight material. As the shape passes in front of the star, the slight dimming of starlight would reveal an artificial presence in orbit.
By putting a series of these shapes into orbit, the aliens could create a kind of interstellar Morse code.
Of course, this is a rather “out there” idea, but I find it fascinating that Kepler could detect an alien artifact orbiting a star tens or hundreds of light-years away. Although this research is only considering orbital “billboards,” I quite like the idea that Kepler might also be able to detect a large structure like… I don’t know… a big Borg mothership. Having advanced warning of the presence of an aggressive alien race sitting on our cosmic doorstep — especially ones of the variety that like to assimilate — would be pretty handy.
Publication: Transit Lightcurve Signatures of Artificial Objects, L. Arnold, 2005. arXiv:astro-ph/0503580v1
This rather outlandish, sci-fi notion comes straight from the fertile minds of researchers from MIT, the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University who are proposing a biology experiment that could be sent on a future Mars surface mission. If their hypothesis is proven, we wouldn’t only have an answer for the age old question: Are we alone? but we’d also have an answer for the not-so-age-old question: Did life from Mars spawn life on Earth?
The idea goes like this: countless tons of material from Mars has landed on Earth. We know this to be true; meteorites have been discovered on Earth that originate from the Red Planet. These rocks were blasted from the Martian surface after eons of asteroid impacts, and the rocks then drifted to Earth.
If there was once life on Mars — a concept that isn’t that far-fetched, considering Mars used to boast liquid water in abundance on its surface — then perhaps some tiny organisms (not dislike the hardy cyanobacteria that is thought to have been one of the earliest forms of life to evolve on our planet) hitched a ride on these rocks. If some of these organisms survived the harsh conditions during transit from Mars to Earth and made it though the searing heat as the meteorite fell through our atmosphere, then perhaps (perhaps!) that is what sparked life on Earth.
You may have heard a few variations of this mechanism, it is of course the “panspermia” hypothesis. Panspermia assumes that life isn’t exclusive to just one rocky body like Earth, perhaps life has the ability to hop from one planet to the next, helped on its way by asteroid impacts. Not only that, but perhaps (perhaps!) tiny microorganisms could drift, encased in interstellar dust, akin to pollen drifting in the wind, seeding distant star systems.
Naturally, when considering the distance between the planets (let alone the light-years between the stars!), one might be a little skeptical of panspermia. But it certainly would help us understand how life first appeared on Earth. After all, it’s not as if the solar system has a natural quarantine system in place — if Mars had (or has) bacteria on its surface, perhaps they have been spread to Earth, like an interplanetary flu bug. Also, as experiments are showing us, microorganisms have an uncanny ability to survive in space for extended periods of time.
So, according to my esteemed Discovery News colleague Ray Villard, the MIT team led by Christopher Carr and Maria Zuber and Gary Ruvkun, a molecular biologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, are proposing to build an instrument to send to Mars. But this instrument won’t be looking for signs of life, it will be testing the hypothetical Martian DNA and RNA. Should this interplanetary paternity test prove positive, proving a relationship between Earth Brand™ Life and Mars Brand™ Life, then this could be proof of some extraterrestrial cross-pollination.
Although this is complete conjecture at this time, as there is no proof that life has ever existed on Mars (despite what research in dodgy research journals tell us), it is certainly an interesting idea that would not only test the hypothesis of panspermia, but also give us a clue about the potential human colonization of Mars.
This could give us pause about sending humans to a germ-laden alien world. It would be an ironic twist on the H.G. Wells classic 1898 novel “The War of the Worlds,” where invading Martians succumb to the common cold from Earth microbes.
See, Wells’ Martian warriors should have done genome testing first.
Donald Yeomans, head of NASA’s Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission, agrees with what I’ve been saying all along (especially since all that “Institute for Human Continuity” bullshit hit the internet). He said at the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory meeting:
“The film makers took advantage of public worries about the so-called end of the world as apparently predicted by the Mayans of Central America, whose calendar ends on December 21, 2012. [NASA] is getting so many questions from people terrified that the world is going to end in 2012 that we have had to put up a special website to challenge the myths. We have never had to do this before.”
Even though NASA agreed that Bruce Willis’ Armageddon was bad, it couldn’t compete with the scientific atrocities 2012 inflicted on its audience. The killer neutrinos, planetary alignment, crustal shift, geomagnetic reversal and super-duper-massive tsunamis proved too much. 2012 has even toppled The Core as worst sci-fi science movie. Now that is impressive.
But what does it all mean? Apart from us science snobs having a chuckle on our blogs, I doubt it will make the blind bit of difference. Why? This is why:
“On the opening weekend of 2012, the movie pulled in 65 million in U.S. ticket sales and an additional $160 million internationally, easily covering the $200+ million budget.
Movies aren’t about scientific accuracy, and it would seem that the hype behind 2012 can stand alone as the biggest moneymaker of all.
Fear sells, science doesn’t. The subject of doomsday will always be a blockbuster. Unfortunately, through the miscommunication of science, fear is usually the end-product.”
EDIT:An earlier version of this blog post stated that the Science and Entertainment Exchange was involved with NASA’s decision to make 2012 “most scientifically flawed” movie in its list. I have received an email from the Exchange’s director that this is not the case. I have therefore edited any mention of the Exchange from the blog (even though my source, the Adelaide Now, still references the Exchange).
The White Star approaches the Shadow’s homeworld of Z’ha’dum on the Galactic Rim.
It would appear that scientists have confirmed that the outer edge of the Milky Way is a bad location for life to even think about existing.
This research reminded me of the “Galactic Rim” in the 90’s sci-fi TV series Babylon 5. The Rim is the mysterious region of space right at the edge of our galaxy where only the hardiest of explorers dared to venture. As explained in the season 2 episode of B5, “In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum,” Captain Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) discovers that his wife (when exploring The Rim) went missing on a planet called Z’ha’dum. It turns out that an angry ancient alien race — called the Shadows — lived on this mysterious world and their discovery led to them being used in all kinds of plots during the latter four seasons of this awesome sci-fi show.
However, the existence of any kind of life (let alone life as complex as the evil Shadows) in the badlands of the Milky Way is looking very unlikely.
Located some 62,000 light years from the core of our galaxy (over twice the distance of the Earth from the galactic centre), two very young star clusters in the constellation of Cassiopeia have been studied. Chikako Yasui, Naoto Kobayashi and colleagues at the University of Tokyo, Japan, found these clusters in a vast cloud of gas and dust called Digel Cloud 2. The stars inside these clusters are only half a million years old, and the majority of them should possess proto-planetary disks (which is characteristic of local star-forming regions). However, it would appear that these stars contain very little oxygen, silicon or iron (i.e. they have very low metallicity) and only 1 in 5 of the 111 baby stars analysed in both clusters have disks.
If proto-planetary disks are rare, this means there will be a rarity of planets. This is an obvious bummer for life to form. After all, Life As We Know It™ is quite attached to evolving on Earth-like planets.
So why are these young stars lacking proto-planetary disks, when local star forming regions don’t seem to have this affliction? The authors of the paper, soon to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, suggest that these stars did have disks, but some mechanism is rapidly eroding them.
The most likely scenario is that low metalicity proto-planetary disks are more susceptible to photoevaporation. Simply put, these disks evaporate when exposed to EUV and X-ray radiation from their parent stars far more rapidly than disks that are metal-rich.
Therefore, if an alien race was able to form, they’d be very rare or they’d be very different from what we’d expect “life” to be like (i.e. they thrive in low metalicity star systems). Sounds like the mysterious Shadow homeworld of Z’ha’dum would be a very rare sight on The Rim of our Milky Way after all.
Oh dear. Just when I was actually beginning to care about the cast of Defying Gravity, it was cancelled half-way through the first season. I was a little annoyed about this as #DefyingGravity on Twitter was fast becoming a weekly ritual; a group of us die-hard sci-fi viewers scoffing at the science atrocities the ABC show was inflicting on us. In fact, the bad science, when coupled with a spaceship full of horny crew mates (a.k.a. friends with benefits… why not?) almost made it compelling viewing (almost).
Apart from hammering home the inevitability of astronauts having sex in space, I almost stood up and cheered when, in the last episode (called “Love, Honor, Obey“), the cast did a great job at explaining the quantum physics thought experiment, Schrödinger’s cat. As the crew was stuck inside a shielded compartment to protect themselves against an impending solar flare (it turned out to be a false alarm), mission control had no way to communicate with the crew. Steve Wassenfelder, the out-of-shape physicist, likened the crew to Schrödinger’s cat; to mission control, as they had no way of knowing whether they were alive or dead, the crew were in fact alive and dead. Clever.
The show also handled the solar flare event pretty well, although they avoided a lot of the details (but kept it within the realms of possibility, as opposed to some movies I won’t mention).
Then, after some fractal tomato plants (I didn’t say all the science was kosher), the crew opened mysterious Pod 4 to see…
…I don’t know what they saw as that was the cliff-hanger of the last episode. I’m sure I’ll end up watching it on Hulu.com, but I don’t think it will be the same without mocking it live on Twitter with the #DefyingGravity contributors (you know who you are).
Then, as quickly as Defying Gravity dropped off our screens, another compelling sci-fi series appears on ABC featuring a competent-looking cast (led by Joseph Fiennes and John Cho). It’s called FlashForward, and after only the first episode, I’m hooked. It’s actually the same feeling I had when I watched the very first episode of Heroes.
In FlashForward, we start off in Los Angeles, looking into several people’s lives, when suddenly the entire planet blacks out for 2mins 17seconds. During that time, everyone has a vision of 6 months into the future.
The series is based on the 1999 novel Flashforward by Canadian science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer, and the premise is pure sci-fi joy. In fact, I was lucky enough to be sent a behind the scenes video by Times.com science comedian Brian Malow (be warned, there’s a fairly huge spoiler, but it’s an awesome spoiler that will get you nodding with joy… but you’ve been warned):
Robert J. Sawyer calls himself a “hard science fiction writer,” so it will be very interesting to see how the show deals with the speculative quantum-conciousness link. Still, it has to be better than that silly mag grav idea in Defying Gravity.
In other news: The lovely Eliza Dushku will live-tweet during the season 2 premier of Dollhouse (on FOX) if she gathers 100,000 Twitter followers before it airs… in 20 minutes on the West Coast. She’s only on about 92,000 at the moment, so it’s not looking likely. Still, I’ll be watching!
OK, so now I’m hooked. This evening, the Google logo changed into a doodle of a crop circle (above). This may seem a little innocuous, after all, Google is always jazzing up their logo with celebratory bits of art. But what did this resemble?
For starters, this isn’t the first time this has happened. A couple of weeks ago, another mini brain-teaser was posted with a flying saucer “beaming up” one of the “o”s in Google. CNET blogger Chris Matyszczyk managed to follow the clues and deduced that the missing “o” could be found in the numerical clue of one of @Google’s tweets. The numbers related to letters in the alphabet and spelled out, “All your O are belong to us.” This was in reference to the classic game Zero Wing (creator of the now famous gamer war cry “All your base are belong to us). It was the computer game’s 20th anniversary.
The logo was explained, the missing “o” was explained and it all related to an event (i.e. the Zero Wing anniversary).
So now we are presented with another conundrum. What does it mean? We have crop circles (linking to the search query “crop circles“, thanks @astrobio74 for pointing that out), a missing “l” in “Google” this time…. and a tweet from @Google with the map co-ordinates: 51.327629, -0.5616088.
Typing the longitude and latitude into Google Maps takes us to a location in Woking, Surrey, UK. The exact address is on Woodham Road in a village/town called Horsell.
Doing a search for the exact address and digging around the houses turned up precious little, until I typed in “Horsell” into Google. In the results is Horsell’s Wikipedia page. Horsell was made famous as being the place where Martians invaded in H. G. Wells’ classic sci-fi novel, War of the Worlds.
Much of the The War of the Worlds takes place around Woking and nearby suburbs. The initial landing site of the Martian invasion force, Horsell Common, was an open area close to Wells’ home. In the preface to the Atlantic edition of the novel, he wrote of his pleasure in riding a bicycle around the area, and imagining the destruction of cottages and houses he saw, by the Martian heat-ray or the red weed.
Great, so I’m almost 100% certain this little Google treasure hunt is pointing to War of the Worlds in some way. But why would Google pick today to do this?
A little more digging into H. G. Wells himself points to a possible answer (although I’m not totally convinced this is the sole reason). Next Monday marks the 143rd birthday of H. G. Wells (on 21 September, 1866). 143 years doesn’t strike me as a significant number, but the trail seems to lead here.
I’m now trying to work out where the “l” in “Google” fits into all this…
Wikus (Sharlto Copley) on the run from the MNU (WingNut Films).
Astroengine District 9 Review.
I managed to watch District 9 last night, and it was awesome. I may as well tell you my conclusion up-front, just in case you don’t want to read on, because I’m not going to be able to avoid mentioning some spoilers. So, if you haven’t already done so, get down the theatre now to watch a unique and enthralling sci-fi docu-action-thriller (but beware, there’s lots of exploding heads and alien gore, so go easy on the popcorn and fizzy drinks).
Generally, it looks like District 9 has received good reviews and a robust nod from the science fiction community, and now I’m going to weigh in with a review from Astroengine.com.
First and foremost, I think D9 surpassed pretty much all of my expectations, which is rare for Hollywood produce these days. It was little surprise then, that this movie wasn’t of the Hollywood brand, it came from the genius mind of the South Africa-born director Neill Blomkamp and Peter Jackson‘s production company Wingnut Films. The whole thing was shot in the gritty South African city of Johannesburg.
Setting the scene
The face of a “prawn.” Kinda cute in a squiddy way.
An alien spaceship breaks down on Earth and comes to a stop over Johannesburg. After several weeks of not seeing any sign of life, the authorities decide to cut their way into the ship. They find hundreds of thousands of malnourished insect-like, human-sized aliens inside. Humans do the right thing by setting up a makeshift shelter in Johannesburg, called District 9 (it is of no coincidence that there’s a similarity with the real events in District Six during the 1966 apartheid government rule). So far, so good.
After a couple of decades of living in the D9 shanty town, the local human populous is getting fed up with their alien neighbours (they derogatively call “prawns”). As it turns out, these aliens don’t appear to be very smart and they are certainly not organized. They have no leader and they are thought to be the “workers” of their alien race. They are far from being the sophisticated invasion party one would expect a technologically advanced race to be like.
Alien underdogs
This is the coolest thing about this movie; the aliens are cast as the unfortunate underdogs that are being forced to stay on Earth by their human captors. Why? Technology, of course.
A military organization called Multinational United (MNU) is put in charge of moving the million-plus alien beings to a new concentration camp housing facility 200 miles away. The whole operation is led by a bumbling MNU field operative called Wikus van der Merwe (played by Sharlto Copley). Wikus is your standard trying-way-too-hard-to-please-and-failing guy with a loving wife (who can somehow see past his many social flaws) and tough father-in-law (who is the head of MNU and responsible for giving Wikus this “big break”). Wikus is almost like a South African hybrid of Steve Carrel, Steve Coogan and Simon Pegg.
Serving alien evictions. Not as easy as it sounds (that sounded easy?!)
There are some fantastic moments when an overly confident Wikus knocks on doors serving eviction notices to the aliens. It is an awkward, yet captivating scenario. The MNU, an organization that obviously has absolute power over the situation, has decided to make the eviction of the aliens seem “legal” by getting them to sign (or “scrawl”) their signature on a small piece of paper. Naturally, the aliens aren’t too happy about all this and Wikus is met with a variety of responses (one where the alien slaps the paper out of his hand and storms off — Wikus triumphantly points out that a tentacle hit the paper, it is therefore signed). Another funny legality is that the aliens have been given human names (such as “Christopher Johnson”) to make their very existence bona fide.
In the first third of the film there are several reminders that the MNU isn’t a tolerant organization. If the armed units are faced with any resistance, they kill on-site. However, they are faced with an impoverished, desparate alien populous that will do anything for a tin of cat food. They are more concerned about chewing on car tires than being shot at. The cat food actually becomes a commodity in District 9, a currency the local Nigerian gangs use to trade for weapons. There is also a hilarious reference to “inter-species prostitution.”
Human-prawn hybrid?
The movie starts off in hand-held documentary style (not in an annoying Blair Witch Project way), following Wikus on his alien eviction adventures, but the atmosphere of the story changes after he accidentally sprays himself in the face with a black fluid in an unidentified cylinder. There is then an altercation with one of “Christopher Johnson’s” friends who tries to distract attention away from the shack that contained Wikus was sprayed in.
Cue alien death, execution style, by the bald-headed bad-ass special unit military guy.
A dodgy stomach and a broken arm later, Wikus is stuck in a situation he can’t get out of. You remember that spray? It turns out that it’s not only a special, highly refined spaceship fuel, it’s also a way to really mess up your day if you breathe it in. Wikus has started to change into an alien.
This is probably one of the weaker parts of the story. How a nasal spray is going to tinker with your genetics in such a way that will turn you into a human-alien hybrid, I don’t know, but District 9 didn’t start with a claim that it was going to be totally scientifically accurate. Somehow Wikus’ left hand also turns into a clawed alien appendage. I’ll turn a blind eye to the fudged human-alien biology lesson.
Guards outside the grim District 9
So we’re locked in a race against time as MNU agents track down and capture Wikus as Wikus becomes more and more prawn-like. From being a flawed MNU officer, he has now become the most valuable human on the planet; he is the only one capable of operating the alien technology (their weapons only react to alien biology).
Prawn purée
During the period when Wikus has been captured and is being experimented on, the MNU shows itself for what it really is; a weapon research facility with little regard for human life, let alone alien life. In one particularly tough scene, Wikus has to fire an assortment of alien weaponry at animal carcasses against his will…
[If you told me before watching District 9 that I would feel shocked by the death of a CGI’d alien being, I’d assume I would have been drinking heavily beforehand. But no, I hadn’t had a beer (although the Pepsi was quite syrupy).]
…At this point, a live alien is dragged out with an X painted on its torso. When stood, shivering at the end of the shooting range, Wikus is ordered to shoot the alien. He refuses, crying. You see that Wikus does have a certain degree of respect for the aliens and he is certainly adverse to killing them. Unfortunately, tied in place, and alien weapon pushed in this hand, he’s forced to fire the gun at the frightened “prawn,” who explodes in a bloody mess.
It’s pretty grizzly and also a little upsetting. I think this is the moment in the movie that you know you are dealing with a different kind of sci-fi storyline and Blomkamp does an amazing job to shock, but not to go over the top.
Agony and terror
Christopher Johnson looks out of the prison van after being captured.
Also, you realize Sharlto Copley’s acting ability is nothing short of outstanding. Before the weapon testing scene, there’s a fair amount of humour angled at his character, afterwards you can feel his agony and terror.
Needless to say, Wikus escapes and runs to the only place he can find refuge: District 9. Fortunately, we are allowed a little time to recuperate after the MNU experiments as Wikus turns into a convict running through his own city.
After a period of making friends with the smart “Christopher Johnson” and little (and quite cute) pint-sized alien son, Wikus and “Christopher” work out they need each other to find a solution to the problems they are facing. “Christopher” needs to retrieve the mysterious cylinder from the MNU HQ to make the command ship (hidden under District 9) function, and Wikus needs alien technology from the mothership hovering overhead to stop him from going 100% prawn.
And so begins an orgy of human-popping. In the best human-alien buddy pairing since Han Solo and Chewbacca, Wikus and “Christopher” assault the MNU HQ with the best alien guns Wikus could steal from those Nigerian “inter-species prostitution” gangs (with a fetish for drinking alien blood and collecting alien junk they can’t use). Of course, now that Wikus can operate these guns, he can have some fun.
A clip from District 9: Wikus uses an alien weapon for the first time (language NSFW):
Many reviews of District 9 are critical of the amount of action in the rest of the film, but I thought it was pretty cool. Science-lite, but it sure was a tour de force of movie action imagination. My particular favourite was Wikus’ energy-lightning-bolt gun that had no difficulty in snuffing out MNU personnel in a cloud of blood vapour.
A few gun battles later, and we return to District 9, plus fuel cylinder. Quite a lot happens, but to cut a long story short… there were a lot of explosions. I don’t want to give away the ending, but it was fairly routine, with a couple of minor plot twists. When I say routine, I don’t mean it was boring, the movie simply went its course without too many surprises. Well, there might have been one or two…
astroengine.com 