- Ken Jennings thinks about Tetris way more than I ever have.
- Although I don’t see my own corner among them — did he bypass Madison Avenue altogether? — Richard Howe’s block-by-block photographs of Manhattan street corners are strangely fascinating. Thirty-ninth and 40th are my neck of the woods, if you’re curious. [via]
- Some really terrific-looking 1930s pop-up books. [via]
- A cute interactive YouTube adventure. [via]
- Caitlin R. Kiernan writes of Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence that
…it appears as an sf story (and, I would say, works well as sf), it’s truly a fairy tale. Many things happen for fairy-tale reasons. Fairy-tale logic governs much of the film, and it strikes out, often, with all the cruelty and viciousness of the best fairy tales. I was very pleased that it’s aged so well. However, this is probably not a film for the sort of sf reader/audience who actually thinks that science fiction is (or, at least “should” be) concerned mainly with science and predictions of the future of man and technology.
I may have to revisit the film in that context. But I don’t think the problems I had with it originally stemmed from a too-rigid definition of what science fiction is, or an idea in my head of how the film should or should not reflect that. I think it’s a very good movie and one of Spielberg’s most complex and mature. But I also think it’s deeply flawed on several levels. Fairy tales can be flawed just as easily as science fiction.