Category: Reviews

Exploring Human Evolution in BBC’s ‘Humans’

Hello everyone. I hope you are all having a good weekend. I know I am. My plan was to finally finish Wheelchair Wars (some day soon, I promise), but as is quite usual for my good self, I got distracted. One of my distractions, other than watching the Lions getting slaughtered by Australia was setting eyes on the above BBC series, called “Humans” presented by the wonderful (and quite pretty) paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi. It details how humans have evolved and dispersed over the last three hundred thousand years, as well as the demise of our sister species (unless you’re an alien reading this in which case I’d like to remind you to please like, share and subscribe) Neanderthals, Denisovans and the human hobbits Homo floresiensis.

What does it mean to be human? Is it the way we look that is important?

These questions are asked and an answer is given.

It is clear that modern humans did not appear all at once but more gradually. It also states that East Africa was only one pocket among many others across Africa where humanity developed. It makes clear that our intellect and ability to change our behavior is what sets us apart.

A criticism though about its portrayal of the extinction of the Neanderthals. It never explicitly stated that although they covered a wide range, their population was always low even at its height, with possible as few as three thousand breeding pairs. So, although they persisted for hundreds of thousands of years, they always lived close to the edge. The fact that human pathogens might have killed them off was never mentioned.

No comment was really made on how they were probably not our intellectual match. Their groups were far smaller, and they were more heavily dependent on kinship lacking the Machiavellian intellect that is theorized to be required for larger groupings .

It did make clear that the second wave of humans (the first wave failed) were far more advanced and better able to thrive in the harsh conditions.

I recommend you give it a watch.

A deep dive into the TV Series “Travellers”

Hello ladies and gentlemen, I have just finished watching all three series of Travellers. It’s probably the best sci-fi series you’ve never heard of.

I have bad news for you, folks. There is an apocalypse on the way. I know what you’re thinking, no shit. But don’t worry. You see, the nineties were the key decade. A future super-intelligent computer (Is this even sci-fi anymore?) called the Director is sending back time travellers on missions to ensure a better future. The fact that I might like warmer summers, and will almost certainly be dead by the forthcoming ice age, doesn’t come into its calculations.

Alas, the time travellers have to take over a living body and erase the previous person. Kind of reminds me of “Body Snatchers”. Fear not, it’s all done very ethically. They take over the bodies of those who are about to die anyway.

The travellers have several protocols to protect the timeline (from Wikipedia) –

  • Protocol 1: The mission comes first.
  • Protocol 2: Leave the future in the past.
  • Protocol 3: Don’t take a life, don’t save a life, unless otherwise directed. Do not interfere.
  • Protocol 4: Do not reproduce.
  • Protocol 5: In the absence of direction, maintain your host’s life.
  • Protocol 6: Do not communicate with other known travelers outside of your team unless sanctioned by the Director.

The team historians have an additional secret protocol involving the periodic updates they receive concerning “historic information relative to [their] team’s role in the Grand Plan”. It is a sub-protocol of Protocol 2:

  • Protocol 2H: This forbids the revelation about the existence of the updates “with anyone, ever”.

The Director can invoke three other protocols in special situations:

  • Protocol Alpha: temporarily suspends all other protocols when a critical mission must be completed at all costs
  • Protocol Epsilon: can be invoked when traveler archives are threatened
  • Protocol Omega: permanently suspends all other protocols when the Director abandons the travelers because the future has either been fixed or deemed impossible to fix

Each episode is fast-paced and action-packed. A large part of the series is the relationships between the travellers and those who previously knew the host. The love story between Macy and David plays a key role in maintaining continuity and interest from episode to episode.

Another key relationship is between Grant and his wife, Kat, who can’t quite bring herself to believe her husband. Correctly, as it turns out. I don’t know if this series could be made today, as it brings up thorny consent issues. Can Kat give consent for sex if Grant isn’t who she thinks he is? Hey, it is kind of philosophical. Let’s leave it at that.

They end up completing many missions, but the future doesn’t seem to be getting better. In fact, “The Faction” ends up being created. This is a group from the future that opposes the Director. Ironically, they are from a newly created timeline where their shelter was not destroyed.

Then there is 001, who has gone way off mission, creating an empire and actually killing travellers.

Spoiler Alert.

It all comes to a head at the end of Series 3, which is probably one of the best finales ever. The director calls Protocol Omega, effectively giving up on the timeline. By the end nuclear war is breaking out, and the travellers are told all they’ve done is speed up the Earth’s destruction. What a downer! Ouch.

But there is one last throw of the device. Grant is transported even further into the past and sends a message that the Traveller program failed.

The final scene is the Director acknowledging its failure and initiating Team Two instead. So, everything you’ve watched at least in this timeline ends up never happening. Almost, like the whole thing is just one calculation of the director. I love it!

Travellers can currently be viewed on Netflix.

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A Deep Dive into Arthur C Clarke’s Childhood’s End

Well, readers, I have a treat for you today after I completed the above novel that was written in nineteen fifty-seven by what is considered to be one of the best science fiction writers of all time. This is considered by most to be his greatest work.

First, a description from Wikipedia (in italics) that I’ve read and agree with.

In the late 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union are competing to launch the first spacecraft into orbit when alien spaceships suddenly position themselves above Earth’s principal cities. After one week, the aliens announce they are assuming supervision of international affairs, to prevent humanity’s extinction. They become known as the Overlords. In general, they let humans go on conducting their affairs in their own way, although some humans are suspicious of the Overlords’ benign intent, as they never allow themselves to be seen.

Yeah, remember the Soviet Union? They were a big deal back then.

The Overlord Karellen, the “Supervisor for Earth”, periodically meets with Rikki Stormgren, the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Karellen tells Stormgren that the Overlords will reveal themselves in 50 years, when humanity will have become used to their presence. When the Overlords finally reveal their appearance, they resemble the traditional Christian folk images of demons, with cloven hooves, leathery wings, horns, and barbed tails. Humankind enters a golden age of prosperity at the expense of creativity.

The Overlords are interested in psychic research, which humans suppose is part of their anthropological study. Rupert Boyce, a prolific book collector on the subject, allows one Overlord, Rashaverak, to study these books at his home. To impress his friends with Rashaverak’s presence, Boyce holds a party, during which he makes use of a Ouija board. Jan Rodricks, an astrophysicist and Rupert’s brother-in-law, asks the identity of the Overlords’ home star. The Ouija board reveals a number which Jan recognizes as a star-catalogue number and learns that it is consistent with the direction in which Overlord supply ships appear and disappear. Jan stows away on an Overlord supply ship and travels 40 light years to their home planet.

The story then continues to reveal that humans are about to make a psychic leap, which will elevate humanity to a new level of existence, allowing it to join the Overmind, but also lead to the end of humans as an independent race.

So what did I think? Well, it was interesting what the author conceived a future alien species would be like. There is no advanced robotics, and only a brief mention of computers that can do wondrous things. Although they are still described as mostly mathematical tools.

Credence is given to the supernatural. This is something that the author quasi-believed at the time but later disavowed. Still, it helps the story come along.

The character development and writing are of the highest quality, and it is refreshing to read something from a nineteen-fifties perspective. You should give it a read.

On a more negative level, the passing of time shows. So, you have to put things we know now out of your mind and use some imagination.

Overall, I’d give it four stars out of five.

Remember to subscribe if you like my content, and chat with you all again soon.

Altered Carbon Review: A Deep Dive into Punk Sci-Fi

Hello dear readers, I am back once again. This time, a quick review of a series I recently watched on Netflix. It’s considered punk science fiction, set over three hundred years into the future, and consists of two seasons.

It includes the relatively novel idea that you can upload your mind into different bodies called sleeves. There are laws that you cannot double-sleeve, that is, exist in two bodies at the same time, but you can have backups that can be activated if you die. So yes, things get complicated.

From Wikipedia –

The series starts 360 years in the future, with most episodes of the first season set in the year 2384 in a futuristic metropolis known as Bay City. In the future, a person’s memories and consciousness (termed digital human freight, or DHF) are recorded onto a disk-shaped device called a cortical stack, which is implanted in the vertebrae at the back of the neck. These storage devices are of alien design and have been reverse-engineered and mass-produced but can only be made from the material on Harlan’s World. Physical human or synthetic bodies are called “sleeves” and stacks can be transferred to new bodies after death, but a person can still be killed if their stack is destroyed and there is no backup. Only the wealthiest, known as “Meths” have the means to change bodies through clones and remote storage of their consciousness in satellites, so they never have to die of old age before being resleeved.

Takeshi Kovacs, a political operative with mercenary skills, is the sole surviving soldier of the Envoys, a rebel group defeated in an uprising against the new world order.[8] In the first season, set 250 years after the Envoys are destroyed, his stack is pulled out of prison by 300-year-old Meth Laurens Bancroft, one of the wealthiest men in the settled worlds. Bancroft offers him the chance to solve a murder—Bancroft’s own—to get a new shot at life.

The second season takes place in the early 2410s, set 30 years after the first season: Kovacs, now in a new sleeve, continues to search for his lost love and Envoy leader Quellcrist Falconer.

Both series have great pacing, and I remained fully engaged throughout. It contains great action scenes, and the world-building is excellent.

Of particular note is the relationship between Takeshi and his AI companion Edgar Poe, who runs the hotel where he stays. It is unclear why Takeshi decides to stay there. Nobody else has stayed in decades. This is one of the drawbacks to the series. It is based on a book that probably goes into great detail, but is at times glossed over in the series.

They are a great watch, and I give a score of four out of five.

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Review of “The First Lady” by James Patterson and Brendan Dubois

Well, readers what can I say. This is the first novel I have read by either of these authors. It won’t be the last. There is so much of the writing style that I want to emulate. The short, fast paced chapters and the exquisite use of language. The cliffhangers that make it so difficult to stop reading. Hopefully, these are the kind of things I can integrate into my own story telling.

This is an exciting quasi political mystery thriller, which has many twists and turns about a fictional First Lady of the United States that goes missing. The cause of her disappearance is muddied by the fact that her husband, has been caught out having an affair in the full glare of the media. You are left wondering has she just sneaked off somewhere to be by her own or has something more sinister happened? Is she kidnapped or even murdered?

In line, with more modern novels and despite being written by two men, it is filled with strong, memorable female characters. The kind of women who get things done. The male characters are more of a mixed bag. For instance, The First lady comes across as strong. A woman who stands by her moral code and ethics. She works tirelessly for disadvantaged kids and had an intrinsic sense of what was right and wrong. The President, on the other hand, comes across as quite weak and pathetic. Not at all like how The President is usually portrayed.

Agent Sally Grissom becomes the main person tasked with finding her. She is my favorite character; strong willed and never prepared to give up no matter the obstacles are put in her way. And there are many. The irascible Chief of Staff concludes that it would be better for The President’s upcoming elections if the First Lady was to have an unfortunate “accident”. The sympathy bounce could propel him to be re-elected and that was what really mattered. He places his faith in a female assassin who enjoys her work.

Some other reviewers have stated that it was far fetched but no for me. In this crazy world we live in, it seems more than plausible. A must read.

It probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise that I give it a score of five stars out of five.