I was up until twoish in the morning watching Alien for the first time. I think it’s a very good movie, but I do have one complaint. For a movie that has the tagline, “In space no one can hear you scream,” it seemed pretty damned silly hearing so many spacecraft sound effects in the silent vacuum of outer space. Silence would have been eerier and far more effective for a gritty science fiction horror film than the Star Wars space opera noise that was chosen. I haven’t seen the director’s cut, but I would be interested to learn whether he corrected that problem.
Now that I have finally seen Alien, I can post the robot survey, but I can’t include the name of the robot after all, because it would constitute a spoiler. The robot from that film will therefore remain anonymous. I detest spoilers.
I shall post the robot survey soon.
Two books I am very interested in reading soon are The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (Huzzah!) by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner, and Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West by Tom Holland. I can’t wait to read them, but I do wish the publishers would release them immediately in trade paperback format. For most purposes, trade paperbacks are vastly superior to cheaply constructed, overpriced hardcover books. If I had my way, the major book formats would be mass market paperback, trade paperback, library edition, and high quality clothbound or leatherbound editions; mainstream hardcovers would be rendered extinct.
That subject line would make an interesting list of ingredients for an Iron Chef RPG contest, too.