This is something that, while probably rather obvious by now, is not something that I think I have said in so many words before here on the blog.
Fantasy and SF (particularly SF these days) is the one thing that pulls me in and excites me more than anything else, to the point where I will read and watch pretty much anything from within the genre if you put in front of me (there are some notable exceptions - I have issues with some fantasy such as Terry Pratchett and with most Sword and Sorcery stuff and I generally try and avoid some of the earlier 'pulp' SF which is, for the most part horrendous), so inevitably I have read and watched my fair share of crap - as the genre can be fairly up and down when it comes to quality.
With that in mind I always get rather excited when I stumble on to something really good, whether it be a book, TV series, Movie or whatever.
Such is the case with Moon:
Moon is set on a mining base located on the far-side of the moon and it deals with last few days of Sam Bell's solitary term of employment upon the station as he comes to terms with with the culmination of three years of loneliness and isolation.
This is a film that I had heard about for a while (it came out in 2009), and had been meaning to pick up for a while as well. Well I did the other day and I loved it.
I don't want to give anything more away - you can do that yourself if you want - but I think that it is an example of the very best of speculative SF - a sub-genre which generally does not get much appreciation or attention from the main-stream movie goer.
This is not some grandiose space opera - with a few vaguely philosophical (and often preachy) concepts tacked on to a series of action sequences. Instead, Moon is a film with a simple (though not simplistic) plot that is based around the exposition of a single idea and of a single question: that of the meaning of one's identity - and it is explored in a thoroughly thought provoking, moving, and most importantly, new way.
I have to say that (apart from the various references to 2001) it reminded me of some of the better speculative short stories that I have read over the last few years (i.e. selective works by J.G. Ballard, Clarke, Asimov and to some extent Niven) and, I think, can be taken as a display of one of the major strengths of SF: which is that, as a genre, SF is inherently without limitations - as it allows you to ask questions/or address concepts and alternate possibilities in ways that are beyond the capability and scope of other forms of literature or entertainment - simply because reality within SF is an entirely flexible thing - and that if this is done well (which it is in Moon, but it is not in many other examples) then there is the potential for the reader or viewer to feel something, or think about something, in a way that they have not felt or thought about before.
Anywho, that's enough prattle for the moment - next story will be up shortly, i'm just tweaking it at the moment and trying to find a good cut off point to end it on for a post.
M
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