I’ve been looking forward to the film “Sunshine” since I first heard about it. It had a great pedigree - Danny Boyle directed it, and I’ve loved some of Boyle’s previous films (“Shallow Grave”, “A Life Less Ordinary”, “Trainspotting”, “Millions”, “28 Days Later”). Its writer, Alex Garland, wrote “28 Days Later” and the slightly less successful (in my opinion) “The Beach”. And the cast was appealing - Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne (who seems to be in every other thing I’ve watched this summer).

There have been so many disappointing science fiction films over the years - “Event Horizon” being the one the generally comes to mind first (“Supernova” usually comes second) - and it’s so easy to become excited about a new film before it runs - that I was worried about expecting to much from “Sunshine”. And in fact, I’m also worried about overselling it here - it’s a really good film, and it’s a really good science fiction film in particular - but it doesn’t make up for the past sins of other films, nor should it have to.
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The future’s so bright…

It’s summer, everyone could benefit from wearing some sunshades… except possibly our globally warmed Earth.

One researched solution to the problem of climate change is to mimic the effects of massive volcanic eruptions. Eruptions have, in recently recorded history, been the cause of rapid global cooling. The eruption of Tambora Volcano in Indonesia in 1815 clouded the Earth so much that Europe and North America barely had a summer in 1816. I remember reading a couple of years ago about the climate history of the town I live in, and being surprised that in 1816 it was so cold that people found ice in their water buckets in July and August.

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The comic “Y: The Last Man” certainly deserves an apocablog writeup all its own, and some day I’ll get around to it. The story in “Y” starts out with all male mammals on earth dying, except for its titular hero, Yorick Brown, and his pet monkey, Ampersand. Mostly the story concentrates on dealing with the social and logistical circumstances of the situation, but the question of “what happened” certainly runs under it.

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