Pandemic Book Review: Parable of the Sower

SPOILERS AHEAD!

It’s 2021 and COVID cases are increasing which makes pre COVID life impossible. Social activities are very limited so there is more time for past times like reading. My first book review of 2021 is Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I would recommend this book.

Octavia Butler is an African American author. I appreciate Parable of the Sower because if features a Black, female protagonist and most of the characters are Black but race is not the vehicle that moves the story along. Parable of the Sower is not a typical Black story that involves Civil Rights, inner city life, music, slavery or sports. I don’t have anything against that subject matter but I love it when writers give Black characters range beyond those roles.

The story takes place in California from around 2024 to 2036. American society has spiraled downward. The economy is in shambles and Americans are living in poverty. Crime is out of control. Homelessness is commonplace. The government is rife with corruption. The nation’s infrastructure has crumbled.

The United States regressed one hundred and fifty years. Every shameful part of our past was a part of the books present. People were enslaved. Workers were routinely hurt in factories. Child labor was commonly used. A large part of the population was illiterate. Drugs and addictions were ubiquitous. A plague was spreading and making people ill.

Racial tensions were high. Nationalism and hate crimes had been on the rise for decades. A presidential candidate from Texas used this vulnerability to gain support. His campaign promise was to make America great again. Octavia Butler wrote Parable of the Sower in 1993.

The book moves a little slow in parts but I would encourage readers to stick with it. The story is a part of a series and there isn’t a very exciting payoff but I was floored by the author’s insight. If Donald Trump read I would have sworn that he based his campaign on Parable of the Sower. We all know he doesn’t read so I will assume that Butler was clairvoyant. She died in 2006.

If you enjoy dystopian novels add this to your reading list. I think you will enjoy it.

3022: My Review

This movie is not good at all. It’s a B movie that happened to have well known actors in it. 3022 is unoriginal with a thin plot and cheap looking. Very little imagination went into the making of this movie. This is one of those films that you run across and it has big name actors in it and you wonder why. What made them do this? What were they going through? Did they owe someone a favor? Are they living check to check like everyone else? I thought they had options.

Spoiler Alert Omar Epps is the captain of a spaceship with a crew of four people. The ship gets lost in space. A young crew member dies, the oldest crew member loses his mind, it’s Kate Walsh and Omar Epps for a while. They run across another spaceship that is lost in space. They decide to help those aboard the other spaceship. Unfortunately there are limited supplies and not enough resources including oxygen for everyone to survive and make it back to Earth in the time they project.

A fight for survival ensues. One of the newcomers dies. The other two lose their minds. Those two eventually die. Kate Walsh dies at some point and Omar Epps ends up an old man lost in space by himself which is sad. I thought that the spaceship had limited resources but I guess Omar figured that out.

3022 is not the year that this takes place it is the day of the mission when Omar Epps makes a journal entry as an old man. The movies takes place in the distant future but the movie set looks like an old black and white episode of “Lost in Space” and they used keyboards on the spaceship that look like the exact keyboard I am using right now.

Lost in Space

3022

I guess if you’re a fan of Omar Epps or Kate Walsh you will enjoy this. Miranda Cosgrove is in this as well and she is very cute. You may like it if you enjoy science fiction under any circumstances. But I can’t find a real reason to recommend this movie. It’s pretty corny.

Terminator, Dark Fate: My Review

I watched Terminator Dark Fate yesterday and it was OK, just OK. I was a fan of the old Terminator films so I gave this film some grace for being a part of a franchise that I loved long ago. However, I don’t think it stands alone very well.

Linda Hamilton and Arnold Swarzenegger were great in this movie. When I heard about this film’s release I was confused as to how either of them could reprise their roles due to their ages. Both actors are what most of us would consider to be long in the tooth to be an action hero. Hamilton is sixty three and Schwarzenegger is seventy two. But they played their roles as well as they did in their prime. Perhaps they are still in their prime; who am I to say? Edward Furlong wasn’t in Dark Fate if you’re wondering but his character was in the story briefly.

I have always had a problem with movies that transcend time and or dimension. Movies such as The Matrix and Inception always confuse me. I have a difficult time keeping track of what is the reality or a dream and what is the present, the future or the past. Back to the Future worked because there were clear differences between the times that he traveled between.

The plot was pretty typical. A young woman held the fate of all humanity in her hands and she needed to be protected. There was a villain, a Terminator that was trying to kill her in order to change the history of the world. She had to be protected. Chaos and destruction ensues. Meh.

Terminator, Dark Fate took place in the future and then went further into the future. I think. It was hard to keep up with what was going on. In all fairness I have to divulge that I borrowed a DVD of this movie from the library. I had to watch it late at night on a work night and I was drowsy while watching it and dozed off in parts. That might explain why I couldn’t totally follow the plot.

Another problem with this film is that it is extremely loud. I’m glad I watched it at home where I could control the volume. This film must have been overwhelming in theaters. I don’t remember being bothered by the loudness of Terminator 2 that I remember seeing in a theater. But I was much younger then and more tolerant of racket.

This movie could stand to be shorter. There is a loud, non stop action sequence that lasted thirty to forty five minutes. Crazy things happened, such as fights against indestructible, futuristic robots in planes while in flight and a huge door was open. They fought the robot under water for a while. The story took place in Mexico City so I have no idea what body of what they were in. The scenes were wild and the noise was deafening.

The evil robot that was in pursuit of the savior of the world, the late model Terminator, had a clear advantage in that he was nearly indestructible. I mean this guy got shot, bludgeoned, set on fire, put through a turbine of some sort and continued to fight. But he couldn’t take out three mere mortals and one robot that was an old model. That was a huge hole in the plot for me.

If you enjoyed the old Terminator films you may get a kick out of this for the sake of nostalgia. You may also enjoy it if you enjoy raucous action films and special effects. This movie was just OK for me. If it wasn’t a part of a successful franchise that I enjoyed long ago Terminator, Dark Fate wouldn’t hold much merit for me at all.