Armageddon
milhayser | November 21, 2016The new film Arrival, based on a story by Ted Chiang, is unlike most any science fiction blockbuster at the box office these days. It's a tense, thoughtful, somber meditation on the human condition and the nature of a higher reality. In many ways, it is a religious film that deals with eschatology (the end times or judgment day).
Unlike Chad Orzel, I haven't read the source material, so I experienced the film with fresh eyes. I was immediately reminded of Philip K. Dick and his real-life experience of being 'touched by an angel.' Dick, both a life-long Christian and prolific author of…
esiegel | May 8, 2008Let's say we're having a nice day here on Earth; the Sun is shining, the clouds are sparse, and everything is just looking like a peach:
And then Lucas goes and tells me,
Oh my God, Ethan! It's Armageddon! An asteroid is coming straight for us! You've got to stop it!
Really? Me? Well, how would I do it? Let's say we've got some reasonably good asteroid tracking going on, and we've got about 2 months before the asteroid is actually going to hit us. We'd like to do something with the situation on the left, to avoid the situation on the right:
Well, what we really have to do is change the…