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Peace Unknown

Christopher Divine

10.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

Book

After 20 years in law enforcement, FBI Agent Edward Brandt has begun to lose faith in the system...

thriller

David McK (3372 KP) rated Crucible (Sigma Force #14) in Books

Feb 20, 2022

Entry #14 in James Rollins now long-running Sigma Force series; again a mixture of science and fiction: think Dan Brown, maybe, or even Michael Crichton.

This time around, the threat that Sigma force (and, perforce, the world) faces is one of our own making: that of Artificial Intelligence (or AI), and - more specifically - that of an 'evil' (one with no moral qualms or compunctions) AI let loose. So, think Terminator's Skynet, basically.

If you've read any of the previous entries in the series, you know pretty much what to expect ...

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Deluge (1933) in Movies

Apr 23, 2019 (Updated Apr 23, 2019)

Deluge (1933)

1933 | Drama, Sci-Fi

7.0

(1 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Pre-Code apocalyptic disaster movie boldly goes where Roland Emmerich would follow several times; also manages to be almost definitively non-compliant with the Bechdel test. A series of unexplained disasters including floods and earthquakes destroy civilisation; in the aftermath resourceful lawyer Martin hooks up with plucky society girl Claire, little realising his wife and children survived the catastrophe. Then fate brings them all back together...

The destruction of New York is the most celebrated sequence in the movie, and it stands up relatively well as an example of practical effects in action, but it happens in the first quarter of the movie. Most of the rest of it is concerned with surprisingly familiar post-apocalyptic themes - people come together and struggle to rebuild, raiders prey on settlements, people question familiar moral standards, and so on. The film's gender politics are startling, to say the least: women appear to have no rights and are basically property (and then civilisation crumbles, ha ha). It is interesting and indicative that the film ends with the affirmation of the traditional moral order. Not exactly subtle or nuanced, and the acting is fairly robotic, but it's pacy and the story is an engaging one. An interesting movie that suggests things haven't changed as much as we sometimes think.