Category Archives: SF

In the 70s Psychic Abilities Were Everywhere

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The other night I began a rewatch of The Exorcist II: The Heretic. It has been 40 years of so since I last watched this sequel to the fantastically successful The Exorcist and most of the film had slipped into the forgotten realms. (Not surprising even 40 years I was unimpressed, and this is often considered the weakest film in the series.) Release in 1977 this movie has many of the hallmarks of cinema of the 70s, particularly genre films and their fascination with psychic powers or it was nearly always referred to then, ESP.

Now Science-Fiction’s love affair with ESP well predates the 70s, Star Trek’s original pilot The Cage fixates on it and it is the foundation for all of the weird and fantastic stuff in Herbert’s Dune. It is in the 70s that this shit exploded across television, film, and books.

ESP and its associated ‘powers’ seemed to erupt in all sorts of fiction even when it was terribly mismatched to the genre. The Devil’s Rain a supernatural horror film about a coven of satanist and the struggle to possess a vital artifact utilizes, in addition to magical powers granted by the lords of hell, ESP in it plot. In the novel The Exorcist Father Karris must exclude by proof that the objects moving about in Regan’s room are not being manipulated by telekinesis. Psychic powers are so assumed to exist as part of the natural world that they have to be eliminated before he can move on to demonic possession. (This bit was wisely dropped from the film’s script.)

ESP showed up in SF films, soap operas, and horror films with amazing regularity. This fascination vanished fairly quickly in the 80s with the study of psychic ability being coded for ‘con man; in Ghostbusters. The 70s were a wild ride.

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My Tangled History With Star Trek

CBS Studios

Credit: Paramount Pictures

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When Star Trek first hit the air in 1966, I was a wee lad of five. I have some memories of watching the series then, being confused as to how the Enterprise blasted-off from Earth, (I was an avid watcher of the American space launches) until the concepts ‘built in space’ and ‘never landing’ was explained to me. It was the 70s that cemented by love for Trek, with the afternoon ‘stripping’ of the series where episodes were shown in random order each weekday afternoon usually alongside other classics such as Gilligan’s Island or Green Acers.

When Star Trek: The Motion Picture hit the silvered screens in 1979 I was there for multiple screens in my local theater. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan remains one of my favorite films. Of course, in 1988 Star Trek: The Next Generation was released into syndication, and I was pleased to have new Trek in my life.

However, I never loved Next Gen the way I loved the original series. I watched it weekly for most of its run, but by season six found that the storylines and writing simply didn’t command my attention. I went to the theater for some of this cast’s feature films but was so repelled by Star Trek: Insurrection that even that stopped being one of my activities.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine came along and it was (shoulder shrug) alright. I watched a few seasons, but not as much as I had Next Gen and dropped out of regular viewership before they progressed to their ‘war’ storyline.

Star Trek: Voyager I managed to choke down three episodes before I fled from it. I found too much of that series either poorly thought out or simply stupid to continue watching save for an episode here and there written by a friend.

Star Trek: Enterprise held promise that enticed me. The idea of going back to a less tech advanced Federation I found fascinating, but I managed only the pilot episode and walked away. It was not for me, and I had absolutely no interest in a ‘temporal cold war.’

Star Trek: Discovery held my attention for several episodes, but I have a clear memory of switching off an episode when they mentioned a ‘space sonar’ and I never returned.

Star Trek: Lower Decks I watched several episodes and generally found I liked it on the same level as The Next Generation but ultimately the characters grated on my nerves. Farce is fine on limited doses, but I have a low tolerance for it as a running series.

Which brings us to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

I adore this show.

It is difficult to understand why this series is working for me when so many of the others repel me. I do think part of the reason is that it has embraced an episodic format. While not as episodic as television of the 1960s where the episodes were intended to be ‘stripped’ and shown out of order,Strange New Worlds has enough continuing storylines that the order of the shows is vitally important, but it also has the freedom to do episodes with standalone stories much like the original series. Not every episode is a banger and some certainly engage me more than others, but the series overall has grabbed.

This set of characters are far more interesting than the fairly bland set from Next Generationwho were presented as far too perfect for my tastes. Chapel has become one of my personal favorites instead of the one-note cardboard cutout as presented in the original run. After all, did anyone really notice her absence in Wrath of Khan?

For those people who love the various variations that didn’t work for me I am happy for you. What a boring world it would be if we only loved the same things. Strange New Worlds hasn’t worked for everyone and their big swings like the cross-over with Lower Decks and the musical episodes have sparked strong emotions but that is so far better than a bland meh. Take swings in your art, try something outrageous, most of all create what you want to see.

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Not a Proper Review: Ahsoka

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Last week on Disney+ the latest series et in the Star Wars universe, Ahsoka released the two episodes.

Disney Studios

Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) is a character from the animated Star Wars Series Rebels and has been briefly depicted by Dawson in the companion series The Mandalorian. The series Ahsoka centers on the chaos and rebuilding following the fall of the Galactic Empire including threats from still loyal Imperials along with the return of a much-feared Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen.)

This is not a proper review because I feel that to fully analyze the success or failure of a piece you must continue to the conclusion. It is in the ending that films and stories ‘come together’ and a botched ending can undermine and ruin an otherwise strong piece. I will not be following Ahsoka to its conclusion as the series in the first two episodes failed to give me any sort of emotional connection that compelled anymore of my time.

I have seen on social media that a number of fans are quite pleased with the series and thrilled to watch more. I am happy for them. It is good to find the art that speaks to you and thrills you and makes you happy. Happiness is a resource all too scarce in these days and years and I will not gainsay anyone for the art that gives it to them.

For me, however, Ahsoka, came across as flat in its characterizations. Not one the major characters presented in the first two episodes seemed to have any real interior life, speaking and acting solely in service of the plot. The plot itself felt like a retread, a McGuffin hunt with a device already employed in the sequel trilogy, a map to lost character. While the visual effects, particularly the ‘Volume’ set are impressive and make locations unavailable to television budgets a reality, and the fights are well-choregraphed there is not enough on the screen to hold my interest.

I hope the fans are happy and I hope for them that the series delivers the excitement and drama that it promises but for me this is a miss.

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Streaming Review: They Cloned Tyrone

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Written by Juel Taylor & Tony Rettenmaier and directed by Juel Taylor They Cloned Tyronecaptures the spirit of 70’s Blaxploitation with a 21st century approach to cinema, storytelling, and metaphor.

Fontaine (John Boyega) is a low-level street drug dealer in the community of the Glenn. Haunted

Netflix

by past tragedy and absent any support systems of people his life is one of ruin, repetition, and violence. While attempting to recover cash owed to him from pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) and sex worker Yo-yo (Teyonah Parris) Fontaine is ambushed by rival drug dealer Isaac but the fallout from the attack leads Fontaine, Slick Charles, and Yo-yo to discover a vast racist conspiracy at work on the people of the Glenn.

With a supporting cast that includes Kiefer Sutherland and David Alan Grier They Cloned Tyrone is a sharp social satire dealing with the African American community’s twin issues of assimilation or annihilation. In the best tradition of Blaxploitation, the ultimate conflict is between the marginalized community and ‘the man’, ‘the system’ and everything that those terms represent. Stark in its violence, unflinching in the community’s despair, and cutting with both its humor and its satire the film is an excellent outing for its first-time feature film director. Boyega delivers a naturalistic and compelling performance filled with a subtlety that reveals an inner life for Fontaine that he cannot bring himself to speak. Parris is unrecognizable here from her more well-known role as Monica Rambeau from the Marvel Cinematic Universe fully immersing herself into Yo-yo a woman of hidden talents. Foxx of course delivers another talented performance, giving this film’s trio the star power to sell it to both studios and audiences.

If there is a fault in this film, it lies with cinematographer Ken Seng.

Photographic dark-skinned performers can be a challenging task for cinematographers, and this is magnified with scenes that are primarily in darkened room or at night. It is possible that in a properly calibrated auditorium the entire film would present in a dark clarity but They Cloned Tyronewas produced for Netflix, intended for streaming on home screen that vary greatly in their quality and settings. The truth of the matter is that in several scenes I found it impossible to actually see the performances. These are all very talented actors and depriving the audience of the expression is a crime against such a cast.

Aside from the cinematography I found the entire film quite interesting, engaging, and compelling. I would favorably compare this Boyega’s pre–Star Wars film Attack the Block.

They Cloned Tyrone is streaming on Netflix.

 

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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Are You The Same Person in the Morning?

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Amid the myriad hypothetical discussions and debate in science-fiction is the transporter problem.

In Star Trek the transporters work by converting the person to energy, let’s ignore just how freaking much energy would be created by turning tens of kilograms of mass directly to energy, transmitting it to a distant locale and reconverting the energy to mass that precisely recreates the original down to every quantum state of every sub-atomic particle.

There are those that feel a precisely exact duplicate that is indistinguishable from the original is for all practical purposed the original. Conversely there are those that hold the original, destroyed in the conversion process, no longer exists and only a copy now survives. A copy that is perfect in every manner but still a copy.

When it comes to the person transported the debate continues with those that feel even with a continuity of memories and experiences what arrives is a copy. There those that feel that the continuity is the person and any debate about the body being a copy is akin to angels dancing on the head of a pin.

There’s no doubt that a person transported suffers a break in continuity. One moment they are standing on the transporter pad and the next they are on the wind swept plain of an alien planet without any memory or experience connecting the two places. I would imagine it is functionally identical to a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.) returning from one of their alters to find themselves somewhere they had no memory of.

In the example of a person with D.I.D. we consider the break in consciousness to be a break in the continuity of the personality and person.

The transporter question can even be applied to everyday events and persons without the need for Sci-Fi environments. Each and every night, or day if you live a flipped schedule, you lose all consciousness when you sleep. That portion of you that is aware, creating continuity of memory and events, ceases for hours and when it returns you have no recollection of the intervening time.

Yes, you might remember dreams, if you awoke during them, otherwise they are inaccessible. People dream several times during a long slumber but only recall the last one because it is the longest in duration and the one that they awoke during.

If you, like me, have occasions of ‘sleep walking’ this break in continuity can be even more pronounced. You went to sleep in your bed but awoke in a different place with the same awareness of the experience in between as that hypothetical person on the transporter pad.

Are you the same person in the morning when you awake as you were when you fell asleep? Dos that break in continuity sever the continuum of your self? If all of your memories are the complex interconnections of your synapses, which remained unchanged during the night, but your consciousness is a property possessed only by a fully active brain, are you a new you every morning?

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Of Parallel And Duplicate Earths

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For its season Finale Star Trek: Strange New Worlds revisited one of classic Trek’s most used budget cutting tropes, a world that looks exactly like out real world. This time instead of a parallel Earth that somehow evolved the exact same continents the justification was a settler colony obsessed with 20th century Earth cultures. (hmm, sound like my book. Same idea deployed for different reasons.) As ‘parallel’ Earths go this was a pretty decent justification and really just there to allow for backlot and location shooting instead of expansive and expensive set construction.

It did get me thinking about those old episodes where the Enterprise discovered a planet exactly like Earth but lightyears distant. It was while watching an old episode of classic Trek that I had one had the idea of writing my own parallel Earth short story.

The possibility of a star system evolving in a doppelganger version of out own is absurdly improbable and the answer to that ‘why is it there?’ question formed the central conceit of the story A Canvas Dark and Deep. Which sold to the fine internet magazine NewMyths.com. You can read it here in their archives.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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From Soulless Monstrosity to Nerd Rapture

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ reinterpretation of legacy characters from the original series has certainly intrigued me. I find I am most fascinated by the new version of Nurse Christine Chapel. Jess Bush’s portray of this Christine, along with a more detailed and varied backstory and motivation has placed her as one of my favorites in this new series. No slight to Mrs. Barrett-Roddenberry, she was given precious little to work with in the original series. Beyond pining for Spock her role possessed no character.

Except of course for episode eight, or seven depending on how you count them, season one What Are Little Girls Made Of?

CBS StudiosFirst aired in October of 1966 the episode centers of the Enterprise searching for the lost humanitarian scientist Dr. Roger Korby, coincidentally the fiancé to Christine Chapel. It is revealed that Korby has discovered the ruins of an ancient and now vanished civilization and from their remaining technology can produce android nearly indistinguishable from humans. He has a nefarious plot and by the end of the episode is defeated and revealed to be an android himself. Fatally injured he had used the technology to transfer himself into a mechanical body a process with which he expected to create practically immortal humans. Kirk and Christine are horrified by the revelation that Korby had been a machine the entire time. When Spock arrives with a rescuing security team Kirk informs him that ‘Dr. Korby was never here.’

It is an interesting question when did our attitude toward ‘uploading’ ourselves into machines change?

What Little Girls are Made Of spends no time debating if Korby is in fact still Roger Korby. Once it is shown that he is a machine his pleas that he has remained himself fall on the deaf ears of Kirk and Chapel. The premise of the episode is that his actions, plotting to replace people until his android society is too advanced to resist, are accepted as proof that he was never Korby ignoring the simple fact that people change. Or that five years of isolation can unhinge even the strongest of minds. Only the fact that he is a mechanical machine instead of a biological one is enough to ‘prove’ he was never Korby. A machine person will always, at that time, be regarded as a soulless monstrosity.

Today the concept of ‘uploading’ yourself into a tireless and immortal machine housing is pretty much a technological rapture, a promise of eternal, blissful life for the those with faith in the Disney Studioslimitless capability of the computational sciences. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier neither Rogers nor Romanov, or the audience for that matter, question if it really is Dr. Zola addressing them from the vast computer banks at the end of the film’s second act. It is simply accepted that with advanced enough super-science of course a person, the entirety of them transferred into another receptacle. Zola’s monstrosity was a product of who Zola was and not from the mechanical nature of his afterlife.

I wonder when did that state change occur in out collective thinking? When did we accept that it is our memories and sense of continuity that defines the ‘real’ us?

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B Movie Review: The 27th Day

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The 27th Day adapted from the name of the same name by John Mantley is a mostly forgotten Sci-Fi B Feature that presents an alien threat is a quite unique manner.

Five people are abducted from the Earth and given each a container with three capsules that when armed and fired have the capability to annihilate every person on the planet while leaving all other life untouched. The unnamed alien presenting these devices explains that his own Columbia Picturesworld is doomed and will soon be destroyed by a natural event. His culture’s ethical standards will not permit them to kill humanity and take the Earth as a replacement, but should humanity kill itself, then the Earth would be free for his people to use to save themselves. The five abductees, a newspaper reporting, an English woman, a Soviet solider, a Chinese Peasant woman, and a brilliant German Scientist, are under no compulsions or influence. Once returned to the Earth they may do as they will, free and unencumbered. The containers given to each of them can only be opened by its assigned person but once opened the weapons are usable by anyone. After 27 days the weapons will become inert. The abductees are then returned to the location from which they were taken. Shortly thereafter the alien hijacks all global electromagnetic communications to announce that the five have been given each a powerful weapon, naming each of the abductees and their city of residence, sending the planet into chaos, panic, and paranoia.

I stumbled upon this movie by accident and after watching it was intrigued enough to track down a copy of the novel and give that a read.

For the most part the film is a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel, except for the ending. To discuss this and way I think in the end the movie was a disservice to the novel I will go into spoilers for the ending and the alien’s motivation.

BEGIN SPOILER SECTION

The German scientist, convinced that there is something more than just death in the capsules, persuades the newspaper man to give him his package and deciphering the mathematical notation etched on their surfaces works out the capsules true potential and, without anyone’s approval or pre-knowledge, fires them, blanketing the globe.

In the movie everyone who was an ‘enemy of freedom’ is killed but all other people are left untouched.

In the novel, no one is killed, but rather each person altruism is heightened. Selfishness vanishes from the human race and people who hoarded resources, be they gangster or corporate overlord, surrender their excess for the betterment of all.

In both version the Earth then invites the alien race to come a share the planet with humanity.

In the film’s version this is nice but ultimately doomed. The concept ‘an enemy to freedom’ is far too slippery to come even close to establishing the sort of human nature that would not fear alien and treat them with the hatred we launch at each other over things as inconsequential as skin tones.

The novel’s notion that a more empathic and altruistic humanity is a more open and accepting one is far more interesting and poses far more challenging ethical questions. With the film’s conclusion there’s only a debate over what does it mean to be ‘an enemy of freedom’ but with the novel’s there’s the argument is it right to fundamentally change a person or a species without their consent even if the results is a universal good?

In 2008 a remake of the classic SF film The Day the Earth Stood Still was released and attempted to change the message of the film from one fearing nuclear annihilation to one of environmental disaster and the result was a disastrous movie. Hollywood would have been better served remaking The 27th Day with its themes of greed and hoarding over attempting to hijack a classic.

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More Thoughts on Star Trek Strange New Worlds

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As I write this, we are one episode away from the conclusion of Season 2 of Star Tre: Strange New Worlds. This season has brought more episodes that swung at new things and new styles than season one, a crossover episode with an animated Trek Series, and the franchise’s first foray into musical territory, while also exploring the deep dark of some of their characters.

The series remains straddling the two worlds of television, being both episodic with each episode pretty much a self-contained story but also with one foot in the saga format as events

CBS Studios

Credit: Paramount Pictures

from previous episodes reverberate both in plot and emotion for the characters.

The series is Canon breaking. The events and experiences of the characters cannot be reconciled with the depictions first aired more than 50 years ago. I am fine with that. The nature of televised story telling has changed dramatically over the last half century and what was acceptable writing and plotting in the middle of the 1960s would never fly for today’s audiences. I would rather the series creatives break Canon and continuity in the furtherance of good character development and story revelations that commit to slavish devotion to a Canon that wasn’t adhered to even during the original broadcasts. There are of course limits. A story that requires that James Kirk joined Starfleet because he was on the run as a serial killer would be a Canon breaking event far too great to accept but having original series characters meeting people that in the first broadcasts that they had no knowledge of. No big deal if the final effect is to tell a good story.

The entire cast continues to deliver stellar performances. (Pun intended, fully and without regret.) The storylines give most of them more to do than any series airing in the 60s would have dared. This season’s treatment of Jim Kirk has felt more in keeping with the original character than his guest appearance in season one. It is quite pleasant to see some of the more supporting characters from the original series getting a deeper backstory and more emotional exploration than they received originally. Spock’s stories seem to create the greatest conflict with ‘Canon,’ but I remind you that even the original series couldn’t make-up its mind on what exactly was the truth. In the episode Where No Man Has Gone Before he refers to an ‘ancestor’ that one married an Earth woman and later this is simply ignored to make his mother human. Having Spock explore and experiment with allowing his human side to be expressed more freely may be a Canon violation, but I find it fascinating.

The characters I am most interested in and have the greatest emotional attachment to are Dr M’Benga, La’an Noonian Singh, and most of all Christine Chapel.

La’an, torn between her nature, button-downed and controlled, and her desire to be more open, expressed in her solo in the musical episode but contained within Christina Chong’s performance well before that is emotionally powerful.

M’Benga and Chapel’s traumatic war wounds are touching and heart rending giving each of them far deep characterizations that the original series ever allowed. While the war itself was explored in the series Star Trek: Discovery, which didn’t quite work for me, I am thoroughly enjoying the exploration of war’s lasting effect on the people forced to endure it. Like Frodo they carry wounds that will never fully heal.

One more episode to go but since this is a not a season long story but a series of interconnected ones, I do not feel that the finale is as critical to the whole season as it would be for another series. So, I can render a judgement without episode 10 and I am enjoying the series even more than I had during season one. In my opinion the best Trek since the original.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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“Magical” Effects in ‘Soft’ Science Fiction

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‘Hard Science Fiction is the sub-genre where no detail contradicts the know laws of physics.  in this there is no faster than Light travel or communication or any form of telepathic psychic ability. It is a rigorous artform practiced by only a few. Once you diverge away from ‘Hard’ SF and into less rigorous applications of scientific fact and theory the art because far wider, encompassing everything from Star Trek the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Often at some point a piece will require some extraordinary effect that upends expectations, introducing new and often unreproducible effects. What is interesting is that in various historical periods there has often been a consensus on what can produce these transformative events.

In the first few decades of the 20th century ‘Rays’, light beyond the visible spectrum, were a common fantastical effect. In 1931’s Frankenstein, Victor boasts of discovering a ray beyond the violet and ultraviolet, a ray that first brought life and one which he harnesses to give life to his creation. In Captain America: The First Avenger is the writers tip their hat to Frankenstein and use a period appropriate ‘Vita Rays’ as per of the process that created Captain America.

By the post-war era ‘rays’ had become a tired trope and in the new atomic age ‘Radiation,’ which really were rays all along, because the empowering effect that grew insects and people to impossible proportions, created powerful mutant abilities, reanimated the dead to cannibalize the living, and endowed several comic book superheroes with the flashier abilities.

Radiation, like the rays before them, eventually passed out of favor as the magic system of less than demanding science fiction stories.

What replaced ‘radiation’ as our go to we need something fantastic to happen here effect?

Quantum Mechanics.

Quantum Mechanics, and in particular the many worlds interpretation of wave form collapse, had been used the furious wave hands and craft stories are in effect blatantly impossible. You want a ‘rational’ reason why the devil is in a jar of goo in the basement of a Los Angeles Catholic Church? Quantum Mechanics. You need a method of time travel to collect some shiny stones and reverse the villain’s victory? Quantum Mechanics. You want a musical episode where the characters react to diegetic musical and sing their truths? Quantum Mechanics.

Quantum Mechanics is no more likely to induce a ‘musical universe’ than gamma radiation is to transform a normal man into an eight-foot tall several hundred-pound monster. These are artifacts of very soft science-fiction employed to wave hands past the impossibility of it all in order to deploy the story the writers want to tell. As long as we remember that these stories are not reality, not a possible future, but the modern equivalent of ‘Once Upon A Time…’ then we can enjoy them for the myths that they are and remember that truth that matters in these stories is not the science but the emotions of the human condition.

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