Space Trash

Space Trash

SnakeAppleTree On Science Fiction

There is too much really good science fiction out there, to realistically be able to read it all. Even if it is all you do with your life and you are a really fast reader. The original masters of sci-fi foresaw this outcome and did not write prolifically. They were better quality writers too. They had more to say, made more of an impact on the readers imagination, and did it with both finesse and succinctly.

After the mid-eighties it became ‘the thing to do’ to write a lot of bland science fiction which does not really say very much at all and which requires epic masterpiece door-stopper multi-novel series to wade through. There are perhaps a handful of exceptions. It gave the generations who grew up watching Trek Wars something to do. Most of it says the same thing as other writers in slightly different but equally as lengthy processes.

This has been the governing recognition of my own humble approach toward writing science fiction. The kernel of an idea fleshed out decades later during revisions and edits, before anybody see’s it at all. Admittedly, some of the best of my own works did come through me for their specific goal of being published by Bright Metallic magazine, for its niche audience; before so many other sf writers jumped onto that bandwagon and swamped it with so many applications that the magazine folded under the weight of demand. It proved that there are far more sf short story writers out there than anyone can hope to ingest.

This is the best advice for anyone starting out or already writing science fiction: Minimalize it. Do not write science fiction for the sake of it, because the tv companies will whip your ass with the same idea before you get to show anybody. Find something better to do with your time, such as reading more of it only to discover that whatever you wanted to write about and thought was innovative and new, has already been done to death and better than you ever could. 

Nobody is going to read your stuff. And if they do, most of the readers will think its crap compared with everything else already out there. This is the most difficult thing to realise about being a sci-fi writer. They did everything we could ever think of already way back in the nineteen-fifties. By the nineteen-seventies the next wave did everything we didn’t think of ourselves yet, but you never heard of those because you aren’t dedicated enough to the genre to have found them and read them. And most of them were crap too.

A handful of names do still stand out. Those, strangely, are not authors who identified themselves as mainly science fiction writers per se, but who turned to the genre as a sideline because it was appropriate for getting their other ideas out. Writers who most of their work was sociological, contemporary and/or historical.

The one exception - and it truly is the only one exception worth discussing, is Philip K Dick. His books, not the 'wtf is this shit?' tv series. It is going to be another fifty to a hundred years yet before his precognitive vision becomes old and outmoded. But then as was said of both Star Wars and Blade Runner: “The Future is Ancient.” 

Having said all that; in case you are interested, some of my sf short stories can be found HERE 

Psst! 

Hey, you ...

But if you want a real treat ... 

(backstreet technodrug pusher mode) 

... this sweet little snippet will get you into some of the really good stuff ... 

for WIKI draft1

SnakeAppleTree

Notes for a Wiki 

Philosophy, Socialism, Spirituality 

Regards the accumulation of accolade as a game played by knobs seeking Affirmation in the form of social prestige. As opposed internal integrity.  As such, a philosophy based on eastern disciplines rather than an Ayn Rands’ Objectivism. In objectivism, the external universe is the focus whereas mastery of internal harmony is far more important to the spiritual adept. It is a philosophy which draws sources also from the mystery schools of Europe which were influenced by those of Celtic Europe and middle eastern cultures of history.

Spiritually, snakeappletree follows the three worlds model of aboriginal cultures; the world of nature which exists independently of man, the world of spirit which exists independently of man, the world of human concerns; these overlap although  we must learn to balance them in our lives  for us to survive (the others will continue with or without us) instead of ignoring and exploiting those others. This should guide our lifestyle. Following on from this the Budo creeds which gives into Zen and the minimalist aesthetic.

To live this way, as an ascetic and as a shaman, is to open one to ridicule and persecution from the western world, most especially those supporting the Departmentalised, compartmentalised, static system. Within its worldview, shamen are by default schizophrenic, mentally ill rather than the healers and spiritual wisdom keepers all other cultures recognise them for. This is a cultural schism. As an independent archeo-historic researcher, the wall of ‘the official version’ is a problem both for integration and for progress. 

At University in the Midlands (“a place to be at the turn of the millennium”) introduced to the works of Carlos Casteneda and Yaqui Indian methods of perception training. At the same time, the medicine teachings of Estcheemah through hyemyohsts storm. Academic lessons in psychology, philosophy and primitivism in art which developed into the post-industrial cultural Renaissance of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Study integrating internal harmony of these concepts with external events; so as to explore the nature of the reality construct, in accordance with the Hermetic European mystery philosophies. Working with several study groups using whichever method is applicable to comprehend ‘the Manifestation principle.” The culmination of explorations of many mystery schools for examples the order of the Golden Dawn and it’s many derivatives, into Chaos magick and beyond.

Moved for several years to Somerset where studied intensely the Eros factor of the European cult of Thanateros, advancing the methods of founder and high priest, Victa Corva Penfold of the Order of the Morning Star (which is not the same organisation as the one you will find on the internet, due to internal conflicts and reformation heavily inspired by feminist doctrine).

Return to live in south Wales where continued to study Shamanism and following Carlos Casteneda’s guidance, the Thanos aspect. Assimilating its multicultural roots, specifically Vodou and Candomble methods. During this time, funded by British government to travel to Egypt and as an academic researcher, independently discovered many cultural associations through etymology and symbolism between Assyria – Babylonia – Egypt – Mesoamerican – North American forms of spiritualism all rooted from the same source teaching. Travelled to Southeast, south and south-west of England to study with spiritists from diverse backgrounds. These travels,  persued under the guise of a folk player carrying an Irish style buzuki. 

Living in south Wales, ran an open-door policy underground recording studio for street musicians, discretely funded by the Welsh government. This resulted in a number of house parties and gigs at official state funded and unofficial secret free festivals. 

Founded a number of small budget animation companies including stop frame, video puppetry and digital. Of these, Ordo Octopia has become the central focus for releasing multimedia products and information through.

The moniker SnakeAppleTree evolved from its origin as the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols for the name of a person, into a characterised fictional entity used for purposes of marketing Ordo Octopia products which is a standard practice in successful business enterprises. 

It’s alter-alias xeno-heart-feather / xeno-heart-blade Is used to release directly to the internet science fiction short stories from a series of novels; Sounds Of Space and Tales of the SpaceWays, also featuring SnakeAppleTree as a protagonist. These have a small and growing cult following. They explore issues of self identity and schizophrenia, ancient spiritual wisdom, the impact of real and fictional technology on culture and community, psychology, shamanism,, spiritism and myth, the suspension of disbelief and the power of imagination in terms of human evolution. 

Concrete Castles

This blog features very low poly WIP (work in progress)
not representative of the quality of the final product.

Concrete and Indigo work like a dream. 

This project sprawls from original inception to what it becomes with bolt-on extra features.

A castle is not constructed in a day, not even a cyber one. 

In some ways this project is an upgrade utilizing lessons learned from the SAT-ART Gallery in SecondLife (no longer available). It follows the same Japanese design aesthetic combined with Brutalism.

This thing is modular.  "The quickest way to do a big project is one step at a time."  

It helps much to keep everything very simple. Increments of 5 and 10.

Each module / room is to be built -as much as possible- in one session. This gets the basics in. The project is a learning curve and earlier modules will be revisited/revised to apply whatever emerges during its progression.

[more pics to follow]

Mushtamel (The Water Garden) - Fremen word, Dune, Frank Herbert

session one

session 5

The Galleries

session 2

The Bath House

session 3

The Sex Torture Dungeon

session 4

floating bed

aptly named 'the chain room'

every sex torture dungeon needs a blackout room

The Kitchen

session 6

The Bedrooms

The Dojo

session 5

The Creche

SF:3D 18.5.18

SCI-FI B-MOVIE TRIPLE BILL

I watch sci-fi. 

Really into it. 

Almost (but not quite) exclusively it's what I watch when I watch a movie. I am more often dissatisfied that I have seen as much of it as I can get my hands on than I am excited about something new coming out. Somehow, these three movies all from 2017 slipped by me un-noticed.  It is possible I saw one or more of them and simply forgot. That does happen, what with the custom neural re-wiring (amalgamemory™) I am involved in. So this weekends project is to make reviewing these a mini-project while making 3D architecture in another window. (link to follow)

I am initially visually attracted to Black Hollow Cage and InControl because they both feature the exact same symbolism SMALL BLACK CUBE * with its planetary associations with Saturn which David Icke is warning us about, statues of it existing at all the Illuminati HQ's and real home video footage of black cube spaceships exiting hyperspace in the skies of our planet. I wrote more about this topic HERE.

The third movie in this tryptic MindGamers is put in there only for comparative purposes with In Control because it has the same theme. Those are both pet projects wherein the screen-writer is also the director while BHC has a bigger team.

* NERDGASM: The Black Cube is also mentioned in Frank Herberts Chapter Dune sextet, Darwi Odrade makes a sculpture of it inspired by both Van Gogh's Chaumes de Cordeville à Auvers-sur-Oise and a Dunetech allowing an art appreciator to experience the artist creating the work in the first place (application of every brush stroke and the feelings deciphered from it) although I cannot recall whether it was Heretics of Dune or ChapterHouse Dune. 

All copyright images used non-profit, fully accredited, within international fair use policy for educational purposes.

BLACK HOLLOW CAGE (2017)

"Thirteen-year-old Alice lives with her father in a secluded house in the woods, where one day she discovers a mysterious device that can send messages through time."

Director: Sadrac González

Producer: Javier Aguayo

Screenplay: Sadrac González

Cast: Lowena McDonell, Haydée Lysander, Lucy Tillet, Julian Nicholson, Daniel M. Jacobs, Marc Puiggener, Will Hudson

INCONTROL (2017)

"College kids discover a device that allows them to take control of others and experience the world through someone else's body."

Director: Kurtis David Harder

Screenplay: Kurtis David Harder

Music composed by: Avery Kentis

Producers: Kurtis David Harder, Camilo Lopez, Chris Ball

MINDGAMERS (2017)

"Young bio-engineers discover that quantum theory can be used to transfer motor skills from one brain to another. As the technology spreads, dark forces emerge and threaten to subvert their technology into a means of mass control."

Initial release: 28 March 2017 (USA)

Director: Andrew Goth

Screenplay: Andrew Goth

Music composed by: Ben Fowler

Producer: Joanne Reay

MY REVIEWS

BLACK HOLLOW CAGE

theme: isolation, individual internal, learning to trust,

A soon to be teenage girl undergoing extreme difficulties with self image and all the emotional mental conflict occurring with that. She is being trained in a remote research facility albeit a homely one, to use a prosthetic arm which reacts to the thought alone without being hardwired to her neuro-system.

When she discovers the black cube in the woods, a host of symbolism ensues, unanswered questions. The box opens and provides her with a slip of paper upon which is a handwritten note. Back in the safety of her own living space, she copies the note and recognizes it to be exactly the same as her handwriting. She has written this to herself, somehow.

There is a dreamlike quality to this film. We are faced with the suspension of disbelief. A sense of wonder. Is it more probable that some alien technology involving time travel or the ability to translate her thoughts into a material object with the properties of handwriting? Her companion who she calls mother is a dog fitted with a speaker device which translates brainwaves to human speech so she can talk with it. All of the technologies in the film suggest that the black cube could also be another technology created by the same laboratory.

The other possibility is that the forest is her mind assimilating all of her experiences; the black box is a fiction of her imagination as she does so. We are unsure whether to believe the black box to be a literal thing or a metaphorical device within the context of the storytelling. This same applies to the other technologies which within the context of the storytelling we are expected to believe are real within her universe. There is nothing to determine or even to suggest that one technology should be real while the other fictional. Indeed, from my own researches I know as a fact that the mind-to-voice technology fitted onto animals already exists.

There is a sense of foreboding and paranoia in the film. Not only towards the father figure but also towards the unexpected visitors who, like the black box emerged mysteriously in the forest and have had an affect on the daily lives of the people living in the house in the woods. The little girl, her dog/mother are afraid of all the other humans. If the black box is symbolism for her subconscious mind, it explains why the message on the note contains those specific words.

There is the sense of games being played, mind games; in the same sense as the psychopath in a horror movie toys with her victims. Here, most of the characters are children apparently as lost in the woods as the main protagonist. The opening scene clearly showed the father figure being brutally murdered, that’s invoking a sense of anxiety. It is unclear whether that is a dream sequence or that the rest of the movie is a flashback sequence leading up to that inevitable event.

So far the movie is about a little girl facing your fear where the relationship between individual and other people inclusive of those wearing animal bodies versus individual and technology. The girl trusts her speaking dog, she trusts mysterious dark objects found in the woods, but she does not trust the people. The one called father, she violently proclaims to hate during a tuition session where they both become angry with each others obstinacy.

Then it transpires at the end of chapter 2 during a heated argument between father and girl, that he murdered the mother and the dog is not actually her mother. The spots of explosive argument between these two breaks up the long quiet calm of the forest.

The other two decide to stay because the old guy likes the young girl, he comforts her in a scene where he stroked her hair and there is blood all over the wall. The main protagonists envy of the girl is evident but we have no idea tall of the relationship between father and the new girl. The new girls brother just watches, usually with no T-shirt on.

I really don’t know what the point of watching any more of this movie is because quite frankly it boring and toxic.

INCONTROL

theme: Remote Electronic Mind Control

She is heavy breathing.
Women heavy breathing means either sex or panic.
Sometimes exertion/exhaustion too.
All three of these are summarized by various levels of; thrill.
All three are vulnerable, states of openess.

Opening scene, the middle of nowhere, a blonde woman crying for help into her phone, most certainly she is not in control. Will she become a Sarah Conner / Eleanor Ripley by the end of the movie?

Visual image of an exotic looking computer chip in a small foam lined case, straight out of ShadowRun.  She speaks into Marks answerphone: "I don't know whats going on." 

She is not the best actress, certainly not the same league as aforementioned feminist idol superheroines. To be expected from a lower budget movie than those so it is unfair to compare. The tone of her voice sounds like she is acting, more than it sounds like she genuinely

The viewer is being asked to suspend disbelief and flow with her narrative.

Unsure what level to accept that at.
Is she a femme fatale or a damsel in distress?

What are we being introduced to here? The computer chip means big business means murders and conspiracy. It feels stolen or that she is its creator, on the run from murderous thieves. The viewer projects this because it is standard fare for these situations. Conjecture. Or am I cynical?  The necessity to keep an open mind and accept her narrative for the story to make sense as a reality, bypasses all of that.

We are being programmed. Clearly, all the symbolism works on several levels to establish this.

Then blah blah cut to a scene with a mansplaining young professor type and a different blond girl, jogging. Next scene, next layer of onion ring, same symbolism. Blonde woman running. She happens to be the exact clone copy of a college girl I shared an interesting bedroom scene with in my late teens.

Now I am suspending my disbelief because this has suddenly gotten personal: barb 1.

But this girl, she does not contact two unavailable people on answerphone asking for help, instead she looks at two happy people (equivalents) and is more insular. Close-up shot of her body language 'accepting something internally'. She uses a computer (same symbol as "the chip" in previous onion layer), but is not doing so well in her college assignment (C- grade for her essay, the lowest possible 'pass').

Basic insect level coding. It works. That chip symbol is powerful.

Perhaps now is the time to explain that the first blonde girl, the lost one, followed up during what I described as 'blah blah' by wrecking her car; flipping it over on the only other object in the middle of nowhere which just so happened to be a perfectly placed ramp, the sort always found lying around on roadsides in the middle of nowhere.

The young lecturer guy was talking about how mobile communication technologies have resulted in a generation who do not understand 'being alone' the way the older generations did. Nowhere is dangerous. You flip cars over there and probably die.

[break time]

"Panopticon. It plays on the idea that if you believe you are being watched, you behave differently. It was a prison design. All the prisoners were around it, there was a guard in the middle that would monitor, but; none of the prisoners knew who was being watched." Samantha

Panopticon: strangely the name of a band I was in during my twenties and a series of graphic novels produced as a tie-in (Panopticomics). Suspension of disbelief getting personal: barb 2.

"If there were no consequences, what would you do differently? If no-one was watching?"  Mark

"As you say." He added; throwing the perception back into her court by emphasizing: these are her words and she is self-responsible for her own decision making. These intelligent characters adept at a form of deflection which highlights the other persons sense of importance. The story so far is underlaying these layers of perception.

Wait a minute ... is this the same Mark from scene one who car-crash-blond left a desperate message on his answerphone? This time he answers his phone despite it not ringing, explaining to whoever the scans came back fine.

Since the movie has made this personal twice, arguably three times by working on these planes: I feel both permitted and objectively obligated to take a liberty of inserting my own personal dogma here:

The Creed

Accountability is Credibility.

Responsibility is Respectability.

Samantha receives parking ticket. Not having much luck with their vehicles, these blondes. She goes home. Mark calls. He has been thinking about what she was saying. There is something she should come and see.

Jenny's place. Mark and Jenny introduce Sam to Victor the confident college drop out. They have all heard about her prison essay. In Jenny's room is a BLACK CUBE with cables coming out from beneath it. Victor stole it from the university two months ago, because obviously universities justy ahppen to have stuff like that laying around unguarded without the general public being aware it even exists. Jenny is brunette and is hooked up to it like sleeping beauty. 

"She's very much awake." Mark

"Some sort of virtual..." Samantha

"It's a little more complicated." Mark
"she's hooked up to this thing, and she's what?" Samantha
"She's somebody else." Victor

Mark turns to Samantha and says; "Jenny."
Samantha writes on a piece of paper: Hi Sam. It's me, Jenny.
Samantha steps back, reads the paper in her hands.
"What the hell? You did that?" Samantha
"No. You did." Victor

"There's something called 'taking a ride' we like to do to get to know somebody." Mark

"You can just go along. How they're feeling can affect your judgement. How they hear, see, feel things. Just focus on where you want to go. The person has to be nearby that you hone in on. Your mind will do the rest. There are certain limitations. Like, its still you in there. You can't look back on what they know, there's no control of memory." Mark

I told you: this is ShadowRun.

From this point onward, the movie can become any number of potential story lines.

Samantha tests the technology. We see a girl sitting at her family dinner table feeling really weird, and a guy resumed father asks if she is alright because her mannerisms change as Samantha takes over.

"You have to remember that these people think they are choosing to do what you make them do. Its not them you have to worry about, its the people around them, their friends, their family." Mark

"So they think they're making the decisions you make." Samantha

"People tend to justify their own actions above anything else. It's surprisingly hard to break. Try it on your own sometime, you'll find yourself doing pretty much everything on impulse." Mark

The group of four psychonauts discuss next sex and riding on the other gender's body. It's pretty much what they mostly get up to with the amazing device. Wouldn't you?

I'm a leave writing any more for this movie review right here.

"The essay is supposed to relate the panopticon as a theory to our modern society, that we behave differently because of possible surveillance, or influence of higher power." Samantha

MINDGAMERS

theme: collective consciousness, control, 

Researching available screenshots in google I recognized that I did already see this movie. It is stylish and confusing. It deserves to be a series, to give it space to develop characters and ideas more, without unnecessary filler but to do justice to the great ideas it contains. It's very theatrical with more budget spent on sets and hiring reknowned actors to add merit, rather than innovative script because being a sci-fi fan I have seen this movie already in various guises a bunch of times.

screenshot from MindGamers: black cube symbology

Vincent Van Gogh: Cottages At Cordeville-Auvers-Sur-Oise

NEXT UP

SF shorts:   Rakka and Dedelo

http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/neill-blomkamp/50107/rakka-a-guide-to-neill-blomkamp-s-brand-new-sci-fi-short

https://geektyrant.com/news/impressive-sci-fi-short-ddalo-tells-an-intense-survival-story-against-alien-creatures