![]() ![]() ![]() Thanks to Prometheus we now know a lot more about this spooky abandoned spaceship and its infamous sole inhabitant, the Space Jockey. This got us thinking about creepy, abandoned spaceships (or not-so-abandoned-spaceships, as the case may be). Captain Jim Holden and his plucky crew investigate, and what they find quickly sends the entire solar system into chaos. It’s a spaceship that actually kickstarts the entire story in the Expanse series – or to be more precise, an abandoned spaceship issuing a distress call (which I think we can all agree is never a good sign). This is a space opera series that incorporates everything that we love about this subgenre: epic space battles, a terrifying alien menace and a healthy dose of mystery and intrigue. Io9 described the series as being ‘as close as you’ll get to a Hollywood blockbuster in book form’ and they’re absolutely right. Rotating, colored lights underneath the ship added to its impact.Next month sees the release of ABADDON’S GATE, the third novel in the Expanse series that began with the critically acclaimed LEVIATHAN WAKES and was continued in CALIBAN’S WAR. ![]() When filmed with special photographic and lighting effects, including adding a roiling-cloud effect created separately using a cloud tank (layering water of different densities to create swirling cloud effects using paint), the model appears to be a huge, hovering craft. Ralph McQuarrie designed the studio model of the mothership, which Gregory Jein’s team constructed of model train parts and other kits. Although a CGI test was done, that technology could not match what could be done using miniatures. Spielberg envisioned the mothership as a floating city that would, at a glance, look so big, complex, and well-lit that it would be self-evident that hundreds of aliens were on board. These sporadic bits of foreshadowing lead eventually (spoiler alert!) to a climatic encounter when an alien mothership arrives at Devils Tower in Wyoming, where humans and aliens meet and communicate using bright lights and musical notes. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) told the tale of various human beings, including Roy Neary (Richard Dryfuss) and Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) being contacted by mysterious forces and visions. When director and screenwriter Steven Spielberg sought to create the mothership for his vision of alien first contact, however, he did not yet have the same computerized tools on which to rely. The digital clouds and mist that swirl around the vehicles add to their mystery. Harnessing the power of computer generated imaging (CGI), the black monolithic alien ships evoke Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) even as they elevate the blocky monoliths into smooth, rounded shapes. The visual realization of the spacecraft emerged from the creative minds and computer drives of 10 different digital effects houses. For the film, the 112 looking glasses became 12 alien ships, each equipped to allow humans to enter a special internal communications room. The short story counts as science fiction not only because of its alien encounter premise, but also for its reliance on complex physics in the communication with the aliens, a detail that the film omits. Instead, the narrator, Louise Banks, simply recalls the time, “just a few years ago, when ships appeared in orbit and artifacts appeared in meadows.” In the short story, the alien ships remain unseen in orbit while their inhabitants communicate with Earth through 112 portals, nicknamed “looking glasses,” that allow visual and audio communications. The resulting narrative of first contact, adapted as a screenplay by Eric Heisserer from a short story by Ted Chiang, proves satisfying, offering a thoughtful consideration of language, communication, and meaning.Ĭhiang’s original piece, “Story of Your Life,” first published in 1998, did not actually describe the alien ships at all. When the team led by Colonel GT Weber (Forest Whitaker) enters one of them, the roughly textured surfaces of the exterior and walls suggest wear or aging but offer no specific clues about the interior, the ship’s inhabitants, or, most important, their intentions. The spaceships themselves present an appearance as inscrutable as the aliens themselves initially are. In response, in the United States, the military and the State Department engage linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) to help communicate with the inhabitants. In Arrival (2016), director Denis Villeneuve’s creative imagination of alien ships arriving at Earth, 12 large, dark, smooth, elongated ships hover effortlessly, without any visible means of propulsion, over far-flung sites on Earth. What would a spacecraft carrying aliens to first contact with Earth look like? ![]()
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