Movie Review: Battle In Outer Space (1959, Japanese)

When I was 6 months old, America managed to land men on the surface of the moon, and bring them back safely to Earth.  It was a heady period in history.  Surely, the moon was our stepping stone to the rest of the Solar System; we could build a base on the moon, and launch larger spacecraft from outside of Earth's gravity well.  We could mine asteroids in zero gravity and use their metallic contents to build more spacecraft and more habitats, and explore even further.  Concept drawings looked like architectural renderings you could almost step into.  

Tragically, much of that future was just a dream.  But science fiction remains a beloved escape for me today, and I still strive to make this world a better one.  Accordingly, I am a big fan of Star Trek.  You can hardly blame me for fantasizing about a bright, shining future while a raging global pandemic I can do little about slays (as of this writing) 384,000 Americans.  Lately, I've been binge watching "Star Trek: Voyager", about 3 episodes per night.  My familiarity with science fiction and my need for comedy only adds to my enjoyment of "Mystery Science Theater 3000."  

But I also like movies, so I still rent DVDs.  I recently watched a Japanese movie from 1959: "Battle In Outer Space." 

Battle In Outer Space is a Japanese space war movie, with a strong emphasis on 'war movie.'  The premise is simple: Earth is brutalized by space aliens in a series of bizarre surprise attacks.  But Earth has its own space ships, and some kind of new heat ray; Earth can resist!  

This movie was made by TOHO, but brought to America by Columbia Pictures.  Many people surely revere this movie for its technical achievements, but I beg you: do not resist any opportunity to joke and jeer at this movie like you're in Mystery Science Theater 3000.  The movie makers were justifiably proud of their (limited) scientific accuracy, but I've been spoiled by a lifetime of Star Trek.  

There are LOTS of miniatures which look adorably like miniatures.  You will see a train derail and crash down a ravine, and you will feel sad--not for the fictional injured passengers, but instead for the lovely toy train that got destroyed.  Even the live-action scenes with human actors running across life-size sets somehow look like minatures on miniature terrain; it would be a marvelous cinematic achievement, if they were deliberately trying to make real actors look like fakey toys on fake miniature terrain.  

Of course this 1959 Japanese movie looks dated; the moon landing we take for granted is still 10 years away, Japan is still recovering from World War 2, and the movie's budget has limits.  Having said this, the special effects are very good for the time.  In fact, the movie seems very effects-driven with paper-thin character/story development; we've seen this in lots of spectacular modern movies like "Tron Legacy" or the DC Cinematic Universe movies, or the recent Star Wars movies: there are amazing effects, but I can't really connect with the characters nor the story, so why did I waste my time watching a movie that leaves me shaken but not stirred?

In this vein, "Battle In Outer Space" has a hero, and he is handsome, and there is a pretty young lady who really, really likes him.  She tells him about her hopes and fears and she smiles at him a lot in the moonlight as they look up at the stars.  Any man would be lucky to spend the briefest moment with this lady.  Our hero never smiles at her.  He doesn't even stub out his cigarette.  He speaks with her sort of, but he doesn't look at her.  In another scene, they shake hands.  Is the hero cold and emotionally disabled?  Or is this Japanese traditional culture?  If so, "Twilight" should have been set in historical Japan, because they really nailed it.  

The aliens have the ability to compel some individual humans to obey their will, by sabotaging and fighting other humans.  Neither these posessed humans nor their victims uses a martial art; no one even throws a kick.  I can't even describe what they were doing.  One guy punches another once.  You might think it's refreshing to avoid that stereotype and see asian people who don't know kung fu, but I (somehow) managed to earn a Black Belt in Karate--I'm not a great fighter, but I know how to do it--and seeing these Japanese people struggle with each other and NOT use martial arts was just frustrating, considering that the fate of humanity was at stake.  

Earth sends an expeditionary force to the Moon, where the aliens have a foothold.  The Earth astronauts land on the Moon with rockets, then explore the Moon with a pair of Moon rovers which (get this) somehow look MORE like Oscar Meyer Wieners than the ACTUAL Oscar Meyer Wienermobile.  These red tubular buggies even have an 'accordion' section in the middle, so they bend and flex like actual sausages as they drive around the bumpy lunar landscape.  Do not resist any opportunity to laugh at them.  

These aliens have attacked Earth from spacecraft, blasting Earth with destructive rays, levitating structures and buildings until they tear themselves apart.  We hear threats and ultimatums from the aliens over radio.  We get one scene wherein we get to see the aliens, and they are wearing bulky space armor, stand about a foot shorter than humans, and they sound like squeaky doggy chew toys.  We never even get to see these aliens' faces.  We have no idea what their culture nor motivations are.  As a Star Trek fan, I'm disappointed; but of course this must mirror the Japanese experience of World War 2, getting bombed by airplanes hundreds of feet in the sky, never seeing the faces of their attackers.  How many Japanese people at that time had actually seen an American?  I suspect the average Japanese person had seen Americans in movies or photographs; but the viewers of Battle In Outer Space are not even given the opportunity to see these invaders, even after the Earth men shoot some aliens and there are bodies to examine.  Don't look at them!  Just leave them there.  

The film's climax is a seemingly endless series of space ship 'dogfight' scenes.  The space ships strafe each other again and again, and I felt--drained by the mayhem?  Ground down, perhaps.  This went on way too long in the movie for any dramatic value; I just wanted the movie to be over, at this point.  But again, these endless combat may be a reflection of the Japanese experience of World War 2, which of course went on for years; whereas we complain about this COVID-19 pandemic lasting mere months.  

Eventually, Earth repels these alien attacks, but there is little resolution; presumably the aliens will attack Earth in the future, perhaps repeatedly, perhaps forever.  Many cheer at the end of this battle, but I am drawn to the General in the center of the War Room, whose face falls, as though on the verge of tears.  Does he grieve for the many civilian casualties we don't get to see in this movie?  Does he lament the lack of resolution with a deadly enemy which is only momentarily defeated?  Does he regret the opportunity for diplomacy with a resourceful and technologically superior civilization?  Does he feel the tragic waste of resources on warfare--resources which could feed, house, clothe, and generally uplift millions during the early 1960s?  I want to know about THAT guy, not this movie's 'hero.'

Ultimately, this movie left me feeling very cold and empty.  

The hidden gem to this movie is the commentary track; most commentary tracks have stars and movie professionals clowning around, but this commentary track is packed full of information, like a series of Wikipedia articles read to you along with the movie for a visual aid.  

Polar Vortex

POLAR VORTEX: Coming to a front yard near YOU.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power premiered a month ago on November 13th.  Last night I watched 3 episodes of it.

Not Much Like the Original Show

I never watched the old show, "She-Ra the Princess of Power," when it was on TV.  The theme song threw me, as a teenager I was out of the show's key demographic, and I thought He-Man was stupid.

I briefly researched the old She-Ra, and I am disappointed by the lazy writing; turns out that not only is She-Ra a female-marketed He-Man-like character, She-Ra is straight-up He-Man's twin sister.  We've seen this kind of thing with Superman/Supergirl (cousins), Luke Skywalker/Leia Organa (spoilers!)...  It's just lazy writing.  And then there are the character names: "Spinnerella" is someone whose powers involve spinning really fast (oh, I was hoping for a cool spider-themed character, but no); "Castaspella" is a sorceress; I'll spare you any more details.

The original show lasted only 2 seasons.  For some reason, they ground out 93 episodes of it.  I have heard that some people complain that the reboot's titular heroine isn't busty enough, compared to the original; that the new art is an insult to the art of the original series.  Having recently seen some of the original, I say the original wasn't good enough to bother comparing.  Besides, the original was on the airwaves 32 years ago, you're probably old enough to move on to other dramas.

The Reboot

The first thing I noticed about the new series was its similarities to other cartoons, like "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic," "Adventure Time," and "Steven Universe."  The art is stripped down.  I am occasionally reminded of the fantastic architecture of Moebius.

I have since learned that the reboot was developed by Noelle Stevenson, the author of the graphic novel "Nimona," which I liked so much I had to buy a copy for a friend.  I see similar story elements in both "Nimona" and "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power."

I liked it!  But then I also like "Adventure Time" and "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic."

Yeah, But I'm a Boy, What do I Know?

I asked my cisgender female wife for her opinions of the new show:

• The art is too sparse for her tastes.  The lack of detail detracts from and obscures the sense of fantastic immersion.  I can see her point--it would be awsome if every scene could be as lushly-rendered as a Moebius cover, but I understand that you don't get detailed art for free; every line on the screen costs animator time.  
• She-Ra's hair is what really tells my wife that the heroine is special and magical; her costume and physical changes don't differ much compared to her 'secret identity.'
• My wife liked the "horsey" joke.  
• My wife thought the choice to make Glimmer heavyset was interesting.  Why did they do that?  Is it a comment that all people are different and have different body types (I immediately notice that the heroes generally have identical body types in the old series; I assume this is lazy design)?  Is it an observation that Glimmer doesn't need an athletic physique because Glimmer uses magic instead of athleticism?  Is it a way for thicc girls to identify with someone on the cartoon?  
• The target audience is likely young, because the story is so simple and the plots move so slowly.  

Conclusion

At the end of a stressful day, I'd rather watch the simple lightness of "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power" than the pointless darkness of "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina."

Ultropolis Headlines

I found several newspaper clippings from some city I've never heard of called Ultropolis with actual superheroes!  Here are some prominent headlines:

DOCTOR WEDGIE PARALYZES CITY

Mad scientist uses ray to put undies in a bunch

EVIL DOCTOR WEDGIE DEFEATED BY CAPTAIN COMMANDO

Hero somehow unaffected by villain's devices

CAPTAIN COMMANDO TO POLICE: I DON'T NEED DEBRIEFING

Commando refuses to meet with law enforcement

POLICE CHIEF CALLS CAPTAIN COMMANDO "LOOSE CANNON"

Warns Commando may not get needed support

BLISTERING ATTACK BY HOT COFFEE SPILL VILLAIN

First degree burns have city seeing red

CAPTAIN COMMANDO LOSES BATTLE WITH HOT COFFEE SPILL

Hero vulnerable to villain's painful powers

CAPTAIN COMMANDO MOPS FLOOR WITH HOT COFFEE SPILL

Hero adds poncho to utility belt

CRIME QUEEN CHAFING DISH RUBS TOWN WRONG WAY

Femme Fatale creates painful friction

CAPTAIN COMMANDO INCAPACITATED BY CHAFING DISH

Veteran crimefighter nearly loses skin in battle

CHAFING DISH ARRESTED; WORN OUT BY SPEEDY HEROINE "THE STREAK"

Super fast lady runs circles around irritating villain

COMMANDO BLASTS STREAK FOR PUBLIC INDECENCY

Heroine seems to fight crime without clothes

STREAK BEATS PANTS OFF COMMANDO IN FEUD

Streak moves too fast to be seen clearly

STREAK, COMMANDO RECONCILE; STREAK LEAVES TOWN

Police Chief regrets departure but happy to watch her go

Mystery Science Theater Is Back

Back in the late 1980s, I attended college in a Major Midwestern University.  I was hundreds of miles from home, living in the dorms and making new nerd friends.  We watched a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation together, but they also introduced me to this goofy UHF show where Minnesota comedians would heckle bad old movies.  I loved it!  It was called Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), and it starred local comic Joel Hodgson.

I graduated from college in the early 1990s, during the George Herbert Walker Bush recession.  Nobody was hiring fresh college graduates with Computer Science degrees.  I worked a Customer Service job and slept on the carpet of my slum apartment with 2 roommates.  In 1991, my local cable TV utility started carrying Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I made the major purchase of a VHS VCR to record it and save the tapes.

MST3K moved from Comedy Central to the Sci-Fi Channel, and I kept watching, until finally the show was cancelled in 1999.

Years passed.  I met and married the most wonderful woman in the world.  I got a car, a house, gray hair, and a Black Belt in Karate.

I had a dream one night, which I still remember today; I dreamed I got up after midnight, turned on the TV, I barely tuned in a snowy local UHF channel, and I discovered Joel Hodgson was making new episodes of MST3K on a ridiculously tiny budget.  I don't remember much of the content of the show, but it was a marvelous dream!  A forgotten treasure, found on the airwaves!

Kickstarting a Dream

Now, amazingly, 18 years later, Mystery Science Theater 3000 is back!  Thanks to a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, Netflix is now streaming a new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 with an almost completely new cast and crew.

The premise of the show is the same: an everyman hero is trapped on a space station, forced to watch bad old movies by mad scientists.  He fights back against this cinematic torment by heckling the movie with wisecracks and by pointing out the flaws in the movie's story, premise, and outdated stereotypes.  Our hero is assisted by some smart-aleck robots (played by puppets).

The Good

The fresh young comedians in the theater are very good at delivering their jokes quickly and crisply during lulls in the movie.  For Starcrash [], the hero and his robot pals play and sing an original song during a long sequence wherein a lady silently explores a mostly-empty spaceship, turning this dull snooping scene into an upbeat musical montage.

My one complaint is that the robot voices and characters are hard to distinguish: what motivates Tom Servo?  What pain has Crow suffered in his life?

The Bad

Felicia Day plays Kinga Forrester, a descendent of Pearl Forrester.  Mary Jo Pehl left some big patent-leather jackboots for Felicia Day to fill.  I get the impression that Ms. Day is still growing into the role.  Honestly, however, every scene with Felicia Day is a delicious toasty oven-fresh sugar cookie, and you won't mind waiting for Ms. Day to blossom into a sinister domineering comical supervillain.

Patton Oswalt is an excellent fit for MST3K; Mr. Oswalt is a recovering film addict, and well-acquainted with many flavors of nerd culture.  He plays Max, or "TV's Son of TV's Frank;" and whereas Frank Conniff's "TV's Frank" was a lovably dopey man-child, Oswalt's character is (like Oswalt himself) more analytical and able to stick up for himself.

The mad scientists have a ska-inspired musical band (is it still a live band if they're skeletons?) who provide theme and bump music.  The Har Mar Superstar is their capable bandleader.

Joel Hodgson is back in disguise, playing occasional bit parts.  Big name stars stop by for cameos; this is much more practical now that the new show is produced in Hollywood, rather than a warehouse in Minnesota.

The (Lovably) Ugly

The look of the show is very similar; the sets and props look like they are mostly assembled out of household junk and then spray-painted neutral spaceship colors.  The robot puppets look the same, although they now have multiple puppeteers and new comedian voices.  The doors sequence has been updated with stop-motion animated models to look more like dynamically-expanding rooms on a cramped spaceship which unfold to provide reconfigurable workspaces and living quarters.  The costumes are very similar: the hero wears a bright jumpsuit, the villains wear oppressive dark trenchcoats.

The show has a bigger budget, but they didn't lose the charm of the low-budget effects.  The models and animation are very reminiscent of Robot Chicken [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Chicken].

The mad scientists have invented the ability to store and transmit audio/video streams in liquid and use plumbing to pump liquid video around their moonbase.  No technology is perfect, and often long scenes are punctuated by clouds of bubbles.  Sure, they could go digital, but they didn't invent digital video, and they desperately want to make liquid video a 'thing.'

Conclusion

Check out the new Mystery Science Theater 3000!  Fans of the original show have a lot to like in the new show.  The new cast should make the show very approachable for new viewers.  If you ever wanted to talk back to the nonsense you saw on the screen, you will appreciate the fundamentals of MST3K.  You have nothing to lose but your bad attitude.

Kristofer Straub's "Starslip:" a space (and time) odyssey

Kristofer Straub is a web cartoonist raised by 2 engineers.  Engineers are the members of society who envision and design our future, so it is hardly surprising that Straub should be steeped in science fiction.  Sometime around 2005, Kristofer Straub started a webcomic that would eventually become "Starslip."  It started simply enough: a fussy nebbish of a museum curator running an interstellar art museum--like a library "bookmobile" showing Earth's greatest artworks to other cultures of the galaxy, if that bookmobile were something like the "Enterprise" from Star Trek--in a gag-a-day format.  The story features short story arcs: a week-long story here, 2 weeks-long there, but things change when the museum curator falls in love with a beautiful princess from the moons of Jupiter.

The story arcs get longer.  Characters who were once introduced as throw-away one-joke characters get long, interconnecting plots.

The starship travels in 2 different modes: a slow mode with (nuclear fusion rocket?) propulsion through regular space; and a fast mode which allows the vessel to transpose itself interdimensionally with another vessel in a similar timeline.  Basically, the ships' computers find a parallel universe where almost everything is identical to the current universe, except that parallel vessel is parked where you want to be, and you're parked where that parallel vessel wants to be.  Then, your 2 vessels "trade places" interdimensionally, using no rocket fuel.  This form of transportation is known as "Starshift" or "Starslip" drive.  Unfortunately, a big problem lurks in the "ALMOST everything is identical" specification: in one universe, the curator is courting the beautiful princess of Jupiter; but then the curator "Starslips" to a universe wherein that princess has died tragically. 

Now our unimpressive curator has a mission in his life, and we witness him becoming a tragic hero.  He must find some way to get back to his princess: the one love of his life, but the computer predicts it will be years--perhaps lifetimes--before they ever find the right parallel universe.  Our hero starts breaking rules and stepping on toes in order to get back to his true love.  He earns some powerful and villainous enemies, and overcomes great obstacles.  Many strips no longer feature a joke in the final panel, instead punctuating with melodrama or pathos. 

During the last year of Starslip, the loose threads and disposable characters we once thought disconnected finally tie into the main story.  The end becomes a tremendous dramatic climax to what was once a gag-a-day satire comic strip. 

I say "last year" and "end" because Starslip officially ended on June 15th, 2012.  Sometimes comic strips (especially webcomics) simply end because the cartoonist gets busy with other activities or the cartoonist runs out of ideas, but Starslip ends with an actual conclusion.  In 2006, Straub and Starslip won awards, but in my opinion, the final year was really the best year of Starslip. 

You can read Starslip for free on the web, http://www.starslip.com/, or you can pay the cartoonist to send you bound volumes of the entire run of the strip on paper.  Buy them.  Give them as gifts to the sci-fi fan in your life.

Now, if only the cartoonist would please draw characters with noses...

I write this not to praise Ray Bradbury, but to bury him

On Tuesday, June 5th, Ray Bradbury died.

On Wednesday, June 13th, I rolled out of bed and faced my bookshelf in the light of dawn, and I noticed an old sci-fi paperback tucked behind a row of other paperbacks: "R is for Rocket" by Ray Bradbury.

I mentioned before how I have a bunch of old sci-fi paperbacks from an old friend who was moving; "R is for Rocket" is one of these.  I started reading this collection of short stories long ago, and I re-shelved it in disgust.  According to my bookmark, I was reading the story "Rocket Man."  Bradbury published this volume in 1962, but it is actually a collection of short science fiction stories published years earlier, some as early as 1943.  On re-reading it, what I mostly notice is the tremendous thrill Bradbury tries to inspire about how awesome it will be once we finally put a man on the moon.

Today, our country has virtually retreated from manned space exploration.  It's true!  Back in the 1950s and 1960s, futurists assumed that astronauts would have planted the US Flag on every planet in the solar system by now.  We would build a moon base to mine resources for more rockets, and launch future space flights from that low-G platform.  It was all right around the corner!  Your kid could grow up to be an astronaut!

Even after we solved the technological hurdles, manned space flight was still hideously expensive, and there wasn't anything exciting in the rest of the Solar system that we really needed to see up close; you know, with actual weighted boots on the ground.  The inner planets are too hot, poisonous, and/or corrosive; the outer planets have an average temperature way colder than even a Minnesota January wind chill; and nuclear fusion reactors are currently a pipe dream.  Put it all together and space colonization is virtually impossible, even if those planets had anything we wanted.  Although humanity seems hell-bent on making Earth uninhabitable, it's still worse in space.

So after the American economy peaked in the 1970s, suddenly Uncle Sugar had a lot less dough to blow on moon bases that weren't going anywhere.  Big Brother can't even afford to treat your broken bones on Earth.  Hell, now some "conservative" politicians are tired of ponying up the tax dollars to keep the venerable US Postal Service (that's Benjamin Franklin's Postal Service, people!) in operation.  So now we use the term "Amazing Technological Breakthrough" to refer to a portable telephone with which you can update your Facebook status.

In 1962, "R is for Rocket" was still relevant.  After we really did put a man on the moon in 1969, the book became a lot less relevant.  You could see history (and the events Bradbury could only speculate on) unfold on the TV news.  Unfortunately, Bradbury's stories seemed to concentrate on the influence such technological changes had on daily life, and the fiction didn't seem to mesh with the reality. 

I mentioned that Bradbury published "R is for Rocket" in 1962.  In contrast, he published his classic "Fahrenheit 451" almost 9 years earlier, in 1953.  Perhaps Bradbury's name became more of a draw after "Fahrenheit 451" and someone saw money in publishing Bradbury's older stuff.

Anyway, after spotting "R is for Rocket" on my shelf, I reflected on Michael Moore's 2004 award-winning documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11".  Moore's title refers to Bradbury's literary masterwork, "Fahrenheit 451," which was about a dystopian future wherein the government deploys 'firemen' to incinerate all books in an attempt to control society through its knowledge of history (an elaboration of Orwell: if you control the present, you can control the past; if you control the past, you can control the future); presumably, Moore created his documentary to remind America of what was severely under-reported and thereby dropped from public political discourse during George W. Bush's election and first term.  Bradbury, instead of being flattered (or even inspired) by Moore's reference, was offended, and Bradbury pleaded with Moore to rename his documentary.

Moore was apparently moved by Bradbury's attention.  Moore promised Bradbury that he'd ask the studios to make this effort, but Moore conceded that doing this was at best impractical at the late stage of the project; as it was, fear of the documentary's controversial nature caused lots of corporate bigwigs at movie studios to fight the movie at every turn.

At its core, "Fahrenheit 9/11" was a desperate and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent President George W. Bush from being elected to a second term.  "Fahrenheit 9/11" became yesterday's news after November 2nd, 2004.  By 2009, "Dubya" was out of the White House, and Americans of almost every political persuasion were enjoying the process of forgetting George W. Bush: the Left Wing wanted to move on from our nation's dark age of fascism; and the Right Wing considered the negative consequences of his reign an embarrassment to future plans to revive those same policies.  As I write this in 2012, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is less than a footnote.

I have to wonder what Bradbury was really concerned about.  "Fahrenheit 9/11's" focus gave it a shelf-life precluding it from having lasting social impact; at best, Moore's work could only eclipse the popularity of Bradbury's for a few years, and could hardly blunt the impact of Bradbury's work.  Was Bradbury simply offended by the derivative nature of the title?  If so, I could point out that Bradbury's book gives no props to Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, the 18th-century inventor of mercury and alcohol thermometers.  I suspect Bradbury either didn't want anyone touching the shiny polish on his literary baby, as if it were a freshly-waxed sports car or an expensive pair of shoes; or that he didn't want a single penny of his royalties to accidentally help pay for Michael Moore's daughters' college education. 

Bradbury is celebrated for supporting libraries, but he has resisted urges to publish his work in e-book format.  He was recently quoted with the following statement: "We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now."  Is this really a science fiction writer?  "Fahrenheit 451" concludes with praise for the oral tradition of literature; if Bradbury supports the dissemination of literature in forms other than print-on-paper, how can Bradbury consider e-books a step too far?  Does he really expect those astronauts he wrote about to lug around hundreds of pounds of printed paper, or should they be required to memorize any book they want to read?  Is it really so terrible that we have constructed an electronic network wherein news, literature, music, conversation, and emergency assistance can be accessible by anyone anywhere?  The problem of "too many machines" might be relevant if the machines start thinking for us.  Perhaps Apple's 'Siri' comes close to this by preventing us from having our fingers do the walking through the actual paper yellow pages of the phone book.  Maybe Bradbury wants us to just smell the flowers and talk to people face-to-face.  But I suspect that Bradbury had simply become a grouchy old man: 'you darned kids these days have too many gadgets to play with.' 

In "Fahrenheit 451," a 33-year-old Ray Bradbury tried to warn us about a future wherein our access to literature--our history: cultural and otherwise--was prevented by an oppressive government.  It was timely: a fictional witch-hunt against books written during 1953's real witch-hunt against domestic political subversives, one year before Senator Joe McCarthy's very sense of decency was publicly questioned.  We can tell that it was still relevant in 2004 because so many wanted to censor or 'disappear' Michael Moore's movie. 

Unfortunately, the Ray Bradbury who brought us "Fahrenheit 451" died a long time ago.  I suspect that Bradbury simply got too old to help us into the future, because he remembers only the good things from his past, and he got to the stage wherein everything new was crap.  If you want to look to a future, Bradbury might encourage us to look to the old future he wrote about (you know, with rockets and astronauts and stuff), not the future we're actually building.

"Fifth Planet" by Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle

I just read "Fifth Planet" (1963) by Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle.  In brief, you don't need to read it.  It contains nothing terribly interesting nor thought-provoking which you can't find elsewhere in better quality.

Back in the 1980s, the cool lady who lived next door moved out, and she gave me a big box full of old sci-fi novels.  I am still reading through these old paperbacks.

One of them is "Fifth Planet."  I was going on a plane trip, so I read this old paperback to fend off boredom. 

When you read old sci-fi stories (or watch old sci-fi movies), you have to make allowances for the unreality of the science, or else you will be an insufferable prick, complaining about every nitpicky detail, and ruining it for everyone else.  Basically, in order to enjoy the story (e.g. people travelling in space), you have to overlook all kinds of science details (e.g. inefficiency of chemical rockets, relativistic velocity limitations and effects, spacecraft interiors are necessarily cramped, etc.). 

If you do decide to explain all the nitpicky science details, you will wind up with a very tedious story.  Similarly, I don't care how the guts of my car work, I only care that it still runs and takes me where I want to go.  Similarly, just as a spaceship is a real vehicle, in a story it is a literary vehicle: as a reader, I don't care how it works, I only care that it gets spacemen from point A to point B; if it breaks in some way, that failure should serve the plot somehow.

You might think that I am simply a dolt, that I'm bored by science, or that I'm just spouting off idiotically.  However, the playwright Anton Chekhov has detailed this sentiment with his rule, known as "Chekhov's Gun": if you have a story wherein you mention that there is a gun in the room, you need to have that gun go off in the next 2 chapters or so; otherwise, the gun in the room is irrelevant and you should eliminate it from your story. 

Fred Hoyle is apparently a knighted British astrophysicist.  In his novel about space travel and policy in 2087, he has decided not to spare you the technological detail.  Seriously, there are approximately 6 pages of engineers standing around debating how the rocket should work.  Worse, the entire rocket is fictional; you will never need to know how this rocket works in real life, buy Hoyle tells you anyway.

The Hoyles also give loads of other details the reader does not need to know, including the color patterns of a plush toy donkey.  "You can put your pajamas in it."  The donkey is irrelevant.  The whole donkey scene is irrelevant. 

In fact, the whole first 100 pages of this almost-200-page novel are irrelevant.  You really don't need to know how the rocket works.  The author is either trying to impress you that he knows about science and engineering; or that he thinks you will be amazed by the possibility that humans might build interstellar rockets, and that you have boundless curiosity about every detail.  I suspect that the truth is worse: Hoyle had an idea about how to make a rocket, and he couldn't resist telling you about it for 6 pages.  Hoyle details characters who later die in ways which are irrelevant to the nature of their personalities.  Hoyle spends several pages making a point using an electrical switch that a Soviet cosmonaut is going insane.  This goes nowhere.

Once you get past that first 100 pages, the whole thing becomes kind of a "Twilight Zone"/"One Step Beyond" mind-bender which is quite interesting; it's kind of like breaking the sound barrier in that the flying is rough until you actually get past Mach 1.

Regardless, you don't really need to read any part of the novel at all.  At best, it's a comment about the Cold War, which ended less than 30 years after the novel was written. 

The most interesting part of the novel, for me, was that the US was depicted as having an interstate high-speed rail network, using which an astronaut sleeps with his girlfriend in New York City the night before his big rocket launch in Florida.  (Either it's high-speed rail, or Hoyle has underestimated this 1100-mile commute.)  Unfortunately, Hoyle decided to gloss over the details of that awesome rail network.  Europe has had high-speed rail for years and we should have it now, but certain Republican state Governors are determined to keep their states "flyover states" and relegate a sane American transportation policy to the world of science fiction.