The Scotsman Abroad | Little Green Men and Big Blue Dudes

Oh, Avatar. For all your faults, I haven't forgotten you. In fact, nearly three years on, I remember you as fondly as any fanboy. Sure, you were awfully silly, but equally, you were sweet, and - no two ways about it - you were breathtaking to boot.

So when I heard sci-fi stalwart Stephen Baxter would be writing a book about the science behind your fiction, I got quite excited. I dusted off my thinking cap and steeled myself for a marathon rewatch.

But you weren't ready yet.

You weren't ready until very recently, even. You took years longer than you were supposed to... but that's alright. I was still open to your science.

I'll tell you this, though: I wasn't expecting it to be quite so sensible.

With more than $2 billion in the bank before it had even hit home video (where it shattered the stats all over again) James Cameron’s Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time. That’s the fact of the matter.

As to the fiction, well... we all remember the broad strokes. The blue people. The big ol’ tree. The incredible flora and fauna. Lest we forget the baddies who laid wanton waste to all of the aforementioned in their unabashedly allegorical quest for the mythical mineral unobtanium.

Good times, right? But obviously well outwith the realms of possibility.

Actually, as it happens, one of the most extraordinary things about Avatar - an all-round extraordinary exemplar of epic SF at the cinema in any event, be damned the backlash - is its oftentimes painstaking engagement with that very thing: possibility. Rarely is the relationship between science fact and science fiction portrayed with such determined attention to detail, especially in a blockbuster of Avatar’s caliber, and it’s easy to grasp why. It’s one thing to be honest, after all, and quite another to be entertaining, but to be both must be doubly difficult — and that, I think, is a conservative estimate.

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Which is to say my most recent review for Tor.com went live a little while ago. 'Twas of The Science of Avatar by Stephen Baxter, and I really rather liked it... that is, with a couple of caveats. You need only click through the link to read the rest.

Please and thank you! :)

Film Review: James Cameron's Avatar

"Despite his broken body, Jake Sully, a former Marine confined to a wheelchair, remains a warrior at heart. He is recruited to travel light years to the human outpost on Pandora, where a corporate consortium is mining a rare mineral that is the key to solving Earth's energy crisis. Because Pandora's atmosphere is toxic, they have created the Avatar Program, in which human "drivers" have their consciousness linked to an avatar, a remotely-controlled biological body that can survive in the lethal air. These avatars are genetically engineered hybrids of human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives of Pandora... the Na'vi.

"Reborn in his avatar form, Jake can walk again. He is given a mission to infiltrate the native alien race, who have become a major obstacle to mining the precious ore. But a beautiful Na'vi female, Neytiri, saves Jake's life, and this changes everything. Jake is taken in by her clan, and learns to become one of them, which involves many tests and adventures. As Jake's relationship with his reluctant teacher Neytiri deepens, he learns to respect the Na'vi way and finally takes his place among them. Soon he will face the ultimate test as he leads them in an epic battle that will decide the fate of an entire world."

***

Well, it took me a month, but The Speculative Scotsman is a difficult sort to tempt into a proper cinema. A 46" series 6 Samsung LCD TV with 5.1 and some massive old speakers see to my particular needs just fine. Sadly, Avatar is not yet available for consumption at home - that is unless a dodgy-quality downloaded cam copy will see to your needs. And readers: you must resist.

If I could only offer you a single piece of advice about this film, it would be to see it on as big a screen as you can feasibly find, and in 3D, while you still can. Then, perhaps, you might like to see it again. More than a decade in the offing, Avatar represents an experience that will not easily be matched in the next ten years - and not in terms of its undeniable aesthetic splendour alone.

The time Cameron and his team have taken to dream up the Na'vi and their planet Pandora has absolutely paid off. Never in my life have I seen a world and a people other than our own realised so spectacularly. From the wonderful interplay of Pandora's ecosystem to more practical concerns such as power and transportation, it seems that every last detail of this fantasy to end all fantasies has been plotted out in some epic story bible.