Meteor, Right? [Reviews: Nemesis and Wormwood]

While I love gung-ho tales of brave oil miners being drafted into the astronaut core and nuking meteorites, giving their lives so that their colleagues can marry Liv Tyler, I'm pleased to report that, at least in written sci-fi, there are some excellent novels that take the meteorite theme somewhere a bit more original.

Bill Napier's novel of asteroid deflection, nuclear stand-offs and medieval heliocentrists, Nemesis, may not be the most accurate depiction of this topic: but it certainly feels like it. The CIA has brought together a group of world-class scientists to form a secret think tank, as they suspect an asteroid has been diverted towards Earth by the Soviets. Up against the clock, the scientists' main challenge is to actually find the asteroid, and tensions rise as they theorise and try out different strategies - while most of the team focus on different telescopes, Webb, the hero, wonders whether the asteroid might have been sighted historically and starts a search for a 17th century manuscript he suspects is the key. Meanwhile the military engage in larger and larger simulations of the impact, and international tensions rise as leaders debate a nuclear response to the attack. Impressively, the scientific, political and military strands are all convincing and while the initial scenario is similar to that of Meteor or Armageddon, the plot develops from pure disaster novel into a much murkier political thriller.

Wormwood, by author of Shadowmancer G.P. Taylor, features a comet bound for Earth, again apparently predicted in an ancient tome. The setting is London, 1756, and the comet is identified by Dr. Sabian Blake, a scientist with alchemical and spiritual leanings very much in the Newton mould. The story is told from several viewpoints but the two main characters are Blake and his thieving housemaid Agetta. It quickly becomes clear this is no scientific romance but a dark tale of Kabbalistic sorcery, ghosts and fallen angels: the comet is the focus for a series of paranormal events and horrors.

Max Needs Thermal Curtain Failure

As the crew of Discovery work to complete the International Space Station, and we approach the end of the Space Shuttle programme, I was reminded of some of the Shuttle's most memorable on-screen appearances.

Disney's SpaceCamp - classic, innocent pre-Challenger film in which a somewhat literal-minded robot sends a group of children into orbit after overhearing a wish. Also a brilliant piece of three-layered propaganda: it's about the Space Shuttle itself which is portrayed as easy and safe enough to be flown by schoolchildren; because it's about the Shuttle this is also a pro-Western technology and civilization message; and thirdly it's an advert for the real Space Camp summer programme at Kennedy - presumably there are now hundreds of Americans who are devastated at not being accidentally blasted into space themselves.

Armageddon - you know, actually the propaganda in Space Camp wasn't too bad. Michael Bay's film on the other hand is an utterly jingoistic and physics-defying caper in which two secret military shuttles are sent to deflect an asteroid.

Moonraker - one of the most ridiculous Bond movies but also one of my favourites - villain Drax is stealing space shuttles and using them to build a space station where he can hide away while the rest of the Earth is destroyed. NASA fights back with it's own shuttles - converted to carry marines in their cargo bays! - while Roger Moore and Lois Chiles get it on in zero gravity.

Species II - opens with a Mars shot that is clearly a political stunt, with a space shuttle crudely welded to an additional engine rig and plastered with sponsorship logos. The senator's son leading the sample-return mission gets only a few minutes on the surface. Naturally this is enough to pick up a taste of the local alien nymphomaniac predator.

Space Cowboys - following John Glenn's return to space this film featured four "mature" but well-liked male actors led by Clint and Tommy Lee as they try to break NASA's ageist recruitment policy... a science fiction film with heart and a lot of gentle humour.

Spiders - where else would you send a secret biological weapon but on a space shuttle flight? And when it kills the crew, what else would you do but bring the Shuttle down into a secret military base and allow it to escape?

Meteorites vs Comets

Two films so similar in plot there must surely have been at some point a defection from one studio to another. And yet the differences are so extreme as to make one film a sfg-only experience while the other has much to recommend it. Ten reasons why Deep Impact owns Armageddon:

1. Gravity
2. Gravity

3. Gravity

4. Gravity

5. Gravity

6. Gravity

7. Gravity

8. Gravity

9. Gravity gravity gravity

10. see 1 to 9 above.

Gravity refers to the universal gravitational force first described (almost correctly) by Newton. No! merely spinning up Mir (referred to here as The Russian Space Station) does not allow you to walk up the central axis and along a side coridoor. No! you can't walk from the back to the front of the Space Shuttle crew compartment just because the engines are running. No! sucking the AIR out of a VACUUM CHAMBER in an Earth-based training centre does not make you weightless! I'm sure many sci-fi fans share at least part of my phenomenal ability to suspend disbelief but this scene just took the piss.

Surprisingly Armageddon was filmed with extensive NASA cooperation - I'm not sure whether this was also true of Deep Impact, where much more of the focus was on the human experience of those caught up in the events whether on Earth or in space.