You’ll find a lot familiar about the journey in the new sci-fi thriller Underwater, but it’s certain to keep you on the edge of your seat, trigger your claustrophobia, and get most of the beats of the survival thriller genre right. Most of that is thanks to Kristen Stewart, who stars as an engineer named Norah, working in an oil drilling facility seven miles down at the bottom of the ocean. Stewart makes our own recent tour of isolation seem pretty tame, as her world literally explodes due to some deep-sea fracking that causes an earthquake, breaking up the facility and severely minimizing the opportunities to leave for the surface. If that weren’t enough, the earthquake releases some kaiju-inspired beasties. It all allows Stewart to create a character as tough and heroic as Alien’s Ellen Ripley with a modern homage to the original sci-fi survivor.
Rod Serling, eat your heart out. Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone writers could take some pointers from Eddie Robson′s new novel, Hearts of Oak. It’s a far-out science fiction novel with all the right notes of a good supernatural fantasy. And it has an easy pace and an impending, looming darkness waiting ahead that will keep you planted firmly in your seat until you get to the last page. Borrowing its title from the popular, age-old song of the British Navy, here the cryptic “hearts of oak” says a lot about the rollercoaster ride for readers that lies ahead.
Taking a cue from the stark, detached, and quirky science fiction mysteries of Adam Christopher’s robot detective in books like Killing is My Business (reviewed previously here at borg), readers, and the protagonists, never quite know what is real and who is real. What we do know is Iona Taylor has been an architect so long everyone knows her and respects her as the very best there is. But she is having a particularly bad week as her colleague has died in the collapse of a building. As she contemplates attending his funeral a new student inquires about private tutoring, and when the student leaves her hat behind the feeling of felt texture in the hat conjures something surreal for Iona–a strange feeling tugging at her, maybe even loosening some long forgotten memories. After a strange event at the funeral and the destruction of yet another building, Iona is called by the authorities not for her advice, but for questioning, becoming a target of the investigation. When the prospective student vanishes, Iona must play detective to clear herself, but she might not like what she finds.
Eddie Robson, a writer of Doctor Who and other radio plays and non-fiction works about movies, is a good storyteller. His narrative reads like a fantasy fable of a king with a talking cat who advises him, in an enchanted city of expansive buildings and replenished resources centered around creating ever higher architecture so the king may relocate his rooms at the very top. The book evokes parts of great science fiction stories and films of the past without pulling too much from any of them. But fans of all these works will find some surprisingly good fun in Hearts of Oak:Planet of the Apes, Tron: Legacy, Humans, Alien, Snowpiercer, The Truman Show, Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint, a flip on Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and The Matrix, and a few episodes of your favorite sci-fi TV shows, especially The Twilight Zone.
The 24 issues of Matt Kindt′s Dept.H series is everything we look for at borg–science fiction, action, adventure, retro, mystery, noir. And it all arrived in one comic book series from Dark Horse. Writer/artist Matt Kindt has said his series Dept.H was inspired by 1970s G.I. Joes, Fisher Price Adventure People toys, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Jacques Cousteau, and readers felt all of that come through. From the patch on the underwater crew outfits that evoked the classic 1960s/1970s G.I. Joe Adventure Team to the SP-350 diving saucer from the famed Calypso in the craft that takes the characters to the depths of the ocean floor in the opening pages, to the setting and Department H Headquarters based on the ocean floor that screams H.G. Wells, Dept.H is one of the decade’s top comic book series. And it’s now coming your way in two paperback omnibus editions beginning next week.
Best known for his run on his Mind MGMT series, Eisner Award nominee Kindt wrote and illustrated the story, with coloring supplied by Sharlene Kindt, his wife. In part the series is an Agatha Christie-inspired closed room case. We meet Mia Hardy, who has been asked to find the mole in the undersea lab, a mole who is believed to have sabotaged the base and murdered her father. Mia has worked with the suspects before, providing the opportunity for the writer to hold back information and share with us bits and pieces when necessary. Who killed Mia’s father? Was it Q, the head of Dept. H security? Her father’s business partner Roger? The frenetic head of research Jerome? Demolition expert Bob? Her childhood friend turned enemy Lily? Her own brother Raj? Or Aaron, the research assistant? Or was it someone topside?
Readers feel the pressure of undersea operations as Mia is plunged into her own peril, as the facility again is sabotaged before she can work her way though all the suspects. How long can Kindt take us for this suffocating adventure before letting us come up for air? The page design even features a graduated flood gauge at the pages’ edges that slowly “fills up” with water issue after issue.
In so many ways, Dark Horse Comics’ Dept.H is everything we look for at borg.com. Science fiction, action, adventure, retro, mystery, noir. And it’s all in one comic book series. Writer/artist Matt Kindt has said his series Dept.H was inspired by 1970s G.I. Joes, Fisher Price Adventure People toys, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Jacques Cousteau, and you can feel all of that come through in its first nine issues this year. From the patch on the underwater crew outfits that evokes the classic 1960s/1970s G.I. Joe Adventure Team patch to the SP-350 diving saucer from the famed Calypso in the craft that takes the series lead to the depths of the ocean floor in the opening pages, to the setting and Department H Headquarters based on the ocean floor that screams H.G. Wells, Dept.H is at the top of this year’s comic book series.
Best known for his run on his Mind MGMT series, Eisner Award nominee Kindt wrote and illustrated the story, with coloring supplied by wife Sharlene. The series is an Agatha Christie-inspired closed room case. We meet Mia Hardy, who has been asked to find the mole in the undersea lab, a mole who is believed to have sabotaged the base and murdered her father. Mia has worked with the suspects before, providing the opportunity for the writer to hold back information and share with us bits and pieces when necessary. Who killed Mia’s father? Was it Q, the head of Dept. H security? Her father’s business partner Roger? The frenetic head of research Jerome? Demolition expert Bob? Her childhood friend turned enemy Lily? Her own brother Raj? Or Aaron, the research assistant? Or was it somehow, someone topside?
Readers feel the pressure of undersea operations as Mia is plunged into her own peril, as the facility again is sabotaged before she can work her way though all the suspects. How long can Kindt take us for this suffocating adventure before letting us come up for air? The page design even features a graduated flood gauge at the pages’ right edges that slowly “fills up” with water issue after issue.
The Thing from Another World (often referred to as The Thing before its 1982 remake), is a 1951 science fiction film based on the 1938 novella “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell. The story is about an Air Force crew and scientists trapped at a remote Arctic research outpost forced to defend themselves from a humanoid alien. It was remade in 1982 by John Carpenter and yet another version of The Thing was released in 2011. The “Who Goes There?” archetype has been redone in science fiction more than any other, sometimes with a different location like on an unexplored planet or undersea, sometimes with monsters, sometimes zombies or other beings that defy description. Usually the protagonists are a group of trapped scientists or alternatively a group of stranded working stiffs like miners.
The most recent “Who Goes There?” creation is the Canadian science fiction film The Colony. The Colony stars Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix, Predators, Man of Steel, Event Horizon, Assault on Precinct 13, Apocalypse Now, M*A*S*H) and Bill Paxton (Aliens, True Lies, Twister, Predator 2, Stripes, Apollo 13, The Terminator). It’s 2045, the world is covered in snow and the few that have survived the changing environment live in colonies. They think their worst enemies are starvation and disease. Their prospects are bleak. And the real enemy this time around? Cannibals. Immediately we think of a sci-fi version of the 1993 film Alive, based on a real-life disaster in the snow-covered mountains… and cannibalism.
