Category: SF

Invasion of Alien Bikini, or, I Feel Sick

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This entry is part 50 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

So, I mentioned the Korean SF film Invasion of Alien Bikini a few weeks ago. Miss Jiwaku and I saw it tonight, and, well, to say it ruined out evening would be an understatement. I am going to tell you the whole plot here, so that you don’t have to see it, and know why you should not, in fact, spend a single won on it. The thing is, the film really didn’t have to suck. The opening section was actually really interesting: I felt like I was seeing Seoul represented in a film in a way I’d never seen …

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Gunpla Advertisement Analysis, and 우뢰매!

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This entry is part 49 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Gunpla Ad Analysis: While it’s a side of SF fandom that, like filk, I just don’t quite “get” — mostly just because I know so little about Japanese anime SF, I suppose — Gundam fandom is something that is, at least, visible here. Gundam merchandise in shops is, in fact, more common here than RPG game products ever were in shops in the North American cities I’ve lived in, and there’s definitely some serious interest in anime here. (Indeed, Korea’s Robo-Taekwon V was quite obviously a response to Japanese battlebot-suit anime frnachises like Mobile Suit Gundam; see here for more …

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Coming Soon: “Invasion of Alien Bikini”

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This entry is part 48 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Well, Miss Jiwaku just surprised me with the trailer a few days ago (when we were booking tickets for Cowboys and Aliens; the trailer was for what appears to be a Korean SF sex-comedy to be released toward the end of this month: Apparently, a guy steps in and saves a woman from some thugs, only to discover that she is in fact a lovely little sex-hungry alien. She wants to rob him of his virginity, and for some strange reason, he refuses… so she tortures him. No matter how cheaply done, no matter how confusing, this is definitely bound …

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Some Notes For Korean Film Companies Considering an SF Film Project

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This entry is part 47 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

After the debacle that is 7광구, which I discussed here, I figured I might write up a few suggestions for Korean film companies considering undertaking an SF project. After all, I’m someone who has studied Korean SF films carefully, picked out their pitfalls and how and why they failed — either domestically, or internationally — and I have a few thoughts based on my own frustration with the way Korean SF film has gone, and is going. I think there are a few very simple things that production companies in Korea need to realize, if they want to start putting …

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7광구 (Sector 7) — Setting Korean SF Back Decades

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This entry is part 46 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

If you want the short version of my reaction: skip this movie, pretend it was never made, save yourself some money and some disappointment — that is, if you have a half a brain and actually like SF. Sector 7 is shot amateurishly, it is badly acted by almost the whole cast — and since at least some of the cast can act, I suspect it’s badly edited and badly directed; the budget was mostly used creating CG for a rather unimaginative monster; it was derivative of The Host (괴물), the Alien series (especially Aliens; it was badly written; it had …

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First Non-Contact?

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I don’t know if this is the first case of attempted first contact, but it might well be: In 1913, David Todd made a flamboyant and well-publicized attempt to establish radio contact with Martians. “Assuming that there is life on Mars,” he told the New York Times, echoing the views of his old friend and patron Percival Lowell, “the evolution of intelligence through the cycle of a million years must be advanced beyond the best efforts of our puny intellects…. Possibly they carry on ordinary conversations at all distances on their planet, where to them miles are as inches. If …

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Platform by Michel Houellebecq (Translated by Frank Wynne)

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I was working on a revision of a story, and a character ended up needing to recommend a French author. Searching my memory, I came up with only a few names, including Camus and Sartre, but as I wanted something more recent, I tried to think of another French writer; Bernard Werber is popular in Korea, and so came to mind, but it was the wrong author to think of, so finally, perhaps because I’d recently mentioned him (here), Michel Houellebecq came to mind. I recalled many of the things I’d read about him: the accusations of his racism, of …

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Lovecraft Stories I’ve Loved

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UPDATE NOTE (3 July 2011): Not really an update, I just ended the final paragraph, as it was incomplete somehow. ORIGINAL POST: My friend Chris still hasn’t read HPL, though he is an excellent writer working in genre fiction and really, I imagined he would have somehow, for some reason, just because Lovecraft’s influence is so pervasive in the speculative arts. I think I was urging him to address that oversight, when he asked me which stories have meant the most to me. I figured I might as well blog it, and then, like most things I swear an oath …

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천군 (Heaven’s Soldiers) revisited: Hanmura Ryō’s Sengoku Jieitai (戦国自衛隊), 독재자 (Dictator), and more Korean SF News

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This entry is part 45 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Long ago, I posted briefly about the monstrosity that is Heaven’s Soldiers (천군) a while back (and discussed it in an interview, too), but this is a point that is sure to interest those who, like me, have no access to Korean SF except through film and that small cache of English translations online linked in my sidebar (okay, here you go). As you may recall, Heaven’s Soldiers is a South Korean SF film about North and South Korean soldiers cooperating on the construction of nuclear weapons with which to apparently meet the threat of foreign hegemonic domination or invasion or …

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Vampires, Confucianism, Christianity’s Latent Monarchism, and the Translation of Sociohorror

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Seriously, now...
This entry is part 44 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

(Note: I’m filing this under Korean SF, though it only fits there if we define SF as “speculative fiction”: still, I think this post does appeal to a crucial question at the heart of the reception of SF and other fantastical genres in cultures foreign to the culture of a given work’s original production. So there.) So I’ll admit it now: I’ve been watching True Blood. Yes, yes, it’s trashy. But as someone who is not very plot-minded, I have to say, it does a particular trick with a knife that I, too, am learning to do. I’m close to …

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