Ad Astra

Ad Astra, a 2019 science fiction drama movie directed by James Grey and starring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Liv Tylor, Donald Sutherland among others. It is more of a psychological drama movie rather than pure technology although there is a lot of science frontiers being broken down as shown in the movie, for eg. colonies in moon, Mars and space travel to Saturn, Jupiter & Neptune. Brad Pitt (Roy McBride) is the son of Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) who has gone away to space for 30 years in search of intelligent life on the universe, in the process he has travelled to Saturn, Jupiter and now stationed near Neptune. His space station has created some cosmic ray disturbances which has affected Earth also, so the son sets out to locate his dad in the vast universe, which takes 79 days from Mars itself. Lot of emotional tug of war between father and the son later, earth is safe from the cosmic disturbances and the power surges. The movie drags a bit in the middle especially when Brad is about to reach Neptune to find his dad after 3 decades. There is no emotional re-union sort of, the Dad has more or less lost his contact and interest in Earth. The movie was nominated to the Oscars in the sound mixing category. The special effects in the movie is quite extraordinary, it is in the human connect that the movie finds its weak spot. 
 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955), Jack Finney’s quietly devastating science-fiction classic, is far less an alien-invasion yarn than a prolonged meditation on existential unease. Its lasting power lies not in its conceit—extraterrestrial spores that duplicate human beings—but in the intimate, insinuating manner of its terror. Finney does not usher in the apocalypse with ray guns or burning skies; he allows it to arrive with a yawn at the breakfast table, a smile held a second too long, a familiar face that has become, almost imperceptibly, vacant. The horror resides in recognition: the dread that the world may look exactly the same tomorrow and yet be irrevocably, irretrievably altered.

The novel unfolds in the seemingly idyllic town of Mill Valley, California, a landscape of tree-lined streets, genial neighbours, and postwar American complacency. Finney is scrupulous in anchoring his narrative in the rhythms of the everyday—doctors’ appointments, dinner-table exchanges, casual gossip—so that the extraordinary intrusion feels not spectacular but invasive, a violation of the ordinary itself.

The story is framed as a first-person testimony by Dr Miles Bennell, a general practitioner who returns to Mill Valley after a brief absence to discover that something is subtly, disturbingly amiss. This confessional structure lends the narrative a peculiar urgency: Miles is not recounting events for our diversion, but issuing a warning, a last, desperate attempt to be believed.

Almost immediately, he encounters an unsettling pattern among his patients. Men and women insist that their loved ones—husbands, wives, parents—are not truly themselves. Crucially, they cannot identify any concrete physical alteration. The “impostors” look, sound, and behave exactly as before. Yet something indefinable is missing. Miles initially reaches for the consolations of reason, diagnosing mass hysteria, psychological projection, perhaps the residue of postwar anxiety or private discontent. Finney builds these rational explanations with care, allowing the doctor’s scepticism to mirror the reader’s own desire for reassurance.

The early cases are quietly terrifying in their vagueness: a young boy convinced his mother is not his real mother; a woman who believes her uncle has been replaced. There is no evidence to refute or confirm them—only intuition, that most unreliable yet most human of faculties.

The novel’s unease deepens when Miles and his former sweetheart, Becky Driscoll, are summoned to inspect a peculiar body discovered in a friend’s home. The corpse is human in form and proportion but unfinished, its features indistinct, as though hurriedly sketched. There are no fingerprints, no lines of character or history: a blank human template. At first, Miles suspects a hoax or hallucination. When the body later vanishes, replaced by the living person it was meant to resemble, the implications become inescapable. Mill Valley is not imagining things; it is being copied.

Miles eventually uncovers the dreadful truth. Alien seed pods, arriving silently from space, grow into flawless physical duplicates of human beings. The transformation occurs during sleep; the original body quietly disintegrates, and the duplicate awakens to assume its place. The genius of the invasion lies in its efficiency. The replicas retain memories, skills, and habits; they blend seamlessly into the social fabric. They feel no love, no passion, no grief—only a calm, utilitarian instinct to survive and multiply. Conquest is achieved not through violence but through replacement, humanity reduced to a population of well-behaved automatons.

As the invasion spreads, Miles and Becky attempt to resist by staying awake, and in their shared fear their old romantic bond is rekindled. Love and desire acquire a political dimension; individuality itself becomes an act of defiance against the pods’ bloodless logic. Finney then delivers one of the novel’s most crushing blows. Becky finally falls asleep, and Miles realises—too late—that the woman beside him is no longer Becky. Her warmth and emotional responsiveness have evaporated. She speaks gently, rationally, urging him to rest, to accept the inevitable. In this moment, the novel’s central terror is laid bare: the loss of the soul without the loss of the body.

Miles flees, determined to warn the authorities, only to discover that the invasion is far from local. Highways and cities are succumbing in quiet succession; trucks laden with pods travel by night, seeding the nation. In a scene that has become iconic, Miles suffers a near-total psychological collapse, screaming his warning at passing motorists: “They’re here already! You’re next!” It is the image of the Cassandra figure in modern dress, shouting an unbearable truth into a world unwilling to listen.

Throughout, Finney insists that emotion—love, fear, longing, grief—is the essence of being human. The pod people promise peace and efficiency, but at the cost of passion. The novel suggests, with disquieting clarity, that emotional turbulence, however painful, is preferable to sterile harmony. Perhaps its most enduring achievement is the way it dismantles the illusion of everyday safety. The invasion does not announce itself with spectacle; it seeps in through bedrooms, back gardens, and polite conversation. Normalcy, Finney implies, is always more fragile than we care to admit.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers endures because it understands that the most terrifying monsters are not those that annihilate us, but those that replace us while persuading us that nothing has changed. Finney’s restrained prose, psychological acuity, and mastery of slow-burn dread secure the novel’s place as a cornerstone of both science fiction and horror. It leaves the reader glancing twice at familiar faces—not because they appear different, but because they look far too normal.

Children of the Thunder

Just got around to finish this book "Children of the Thunder" by John Brunner. It is a science fiction book and John Brunner takes a long time to get around to the story. It is about some kids who commit juvenile crime but of such proportions as to shock even the adult mind, crimes, such as running a prostitution racket, protection racket, murder etc. All these kids are ostensibly born out of surrogacy and there are doubts that all these kids might probably be from one donor. First there is an assumption of mind control in the sense that these kids have some kind of psychic power where they can read people's minds and they are brilliant but in a devious way. In between there are newspaper reports of some kind of catastrophe after another taking place somewhere in the world and there is also mention of a General Thrower who is a probably a menace to the society. Peter Levin is a science fiction writer who makes a living by digging up stories on calamities and Dr. Claudia is a science researcher from US who has developed the instinct that there is something violently wrong with these kids and could there be a connection between. Brunner has attempted to carve out a plausible story but it all ends up in one big disappointment, hence the 1 star.

Children of the Thunder

I have just concluded my reading of Children of the Thunder by John Brunner — a work of speculative fiction that reveals its depths only to the patient reader. Brunner, that chronicler of social disquiet and technological hubris, here crafts a narrative that unfolds with unhurried deliberation, drawing us inexorably into a world where evolution itself seems to have conspired against the moral fabric of humankind.

At its surface, the novel concerns a band of seemingly ordinary children engaged in acts of depravity that would appal even the most jaded adult conscience — juvenile delinquents orchestrating prostitution rackets, protection schemes, and even cold-blooded murder. Yet these are no mere products of urban decay; they are the progeny of surrogacy, their origins shrouded in a chilling hypothesis — that all might share a single, mysterious genetic donor.

Gradually, Brunner peels back the layers of this unsettling premise to reveal an even darker truth. These children, it appears, are endowed with formidable psychic abilities: the power to read and bend minds to their will. Intellectually brilliant yet spiritually barren, they embody the nightmarish possibility of intelligence unmoored from empathy — the triumph of intellect over humanity.

Threaded through this disquieting tale are fragmentary news reports of one catastrophe after another — ecological, political, moral — suggesting that the planet itself is convulsing under the strain of its own misbegotten offspring. Looming somewhere in this tapestry of chaos is the enigmatic figure of General Thrower, a name that recurs like a spectral refrain, hinting at some malevolent force operating behind the scenes.

Among the more grounded figures are Peter Levin, a weary science-fiction writer eking out a living chronicling human calamity, and Dr. Claudia, a researcher whose scientific curiosity gradually transforms into moral alarm. Her intuition — that there exists a link between these psychically gifted children and the world’s escalating descent into disorder — propels the narrative toward its inexorable moral reckoning.

Brunner is never in haste. He allows his story to simmer, to accrete atmosphere and unease, until what began as a mystery becomes a meditation — on creation and corruption, on the perilous seductions of science, and on the fragility of human conscience in an age that worships power over principle.

Children of the Thunder is not merely a work of science fiction; it is a sombre prophecy — a dark mirror held up to our civilisation’s own unthinking faith in progress.

Picture taken from the internet not with an intention to violation of copyright. 

Rendezvouz with Rama

Just finished reading "Rendezvouz with Rama", the first book of the Rama series by Arthur Clarke. 

No wonder Arthur has been named as the grand master of science fiction. He wins hands down with his deep, near perfect description of Rama, an interstellar spacecraft. Clarke weaves his magic here. 

Waiting to read the other books in the series and his other series also. Goodreads 5/5

Picture taken from the internet, no copyright violation intended

Tyrannosaur Canyon

Just finished reading "Tyrannosaur Canyon" by Douglas Preston, a science fiction with murder, crime, action, etc. a fast moving, exciting book.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Just finished reading "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea" by Jules Verne, the father of science fiction. 

It is an absolutely amazing and fascinating story of Captain Nemo and his "Nautilus" and his adventures under the sea. Never a dull moment despite the heavy usage of scientific terminology. Goodreads 4/5

Dreamcatcher

Just finished reading "Dreamcatcher" by Stephen King, the master of the "horror" genre. This one is not exactly horror but more sci-fi. 

Stephen has infused so much of humour into the narrative that the horror part seems to be passe. He has build in an excellent human interest narrative into this book, almost like a thriller. 

It is my first one of Stephen King. I think the horror part will come out better in a movie than in the book. This one of 692 pages, I finished in 5 days. Goodreads 3/5

Around the World in 80 Days

Hi All, Just finished reading "Around the World in 80 Days" by Jules Verne. The back cover says Jules Verne is called father of science fiction. I did not find any S/F here, more of travel writing. The fact that Phileas Fogg achieved his mission in less than honourable circumstances make it a 4/5 rating.