A curated Collection of Fantasy and Science Fiction Media
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Welcome to the Escape Velocity Collection!
We are an opinionated group of friends reviewing all sorts of fantasy and science fiction media. Don’t forget to get to know the curators and visit our curated Collection, where we discuss the stories that never cease to transport us to another world.
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- Movie directed by Steven Spielberg
- Starring Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, and Max von Sydow
- Released 21 June 2002
- Runtime: 145 minutes
The Spielberg movie Minority Report is relatively well known for its visual style, especially the gesture-control computers that John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, uses at the start of the story.
The film does indeed look very good, and I believe that its style and effects hold up decently well even today, over 20 years after its release.
The plot departs relatively far from Dick’s short story in order to make more room for moments of character drama and interpersonal conflict – which makes sense, given that the short story is short enough for the concepts and ideas alone to keep the story afloat.
The added layer makes the story more relatable (if at times also somewhat convoluted). I will not say that the movie’s emotional moments are particularly strong, but for a sci-fi action movie, they work well enough.
The chase- and action scenes could have been a bit shorter for me, and I would have liked the movie to play up the weird cyberpunk elements just a bit more. Overall, though, I think there is enough interesting sci-fi and enough of Dick in there to keep less action-inclined viewers engaged too.
There are a number of interesting thematic departures between the story and the movie, though. I might need to do a post on Dick adaptations in the near future for more of an in depth-discussion on those…
I’ve never been a fan of Tom Cruise’s acting – I always feel like he is just being Tom Cruise, running around different sci-fi or thriller environments. Minority Report is no different, and I would not say that the acting of the other characters is particularly outstanding. It works, however, and the story, pace and visuals pull you in enough for the acting not to matter too much.
In conclusion, not a masterpiece, but well worth a watch.
- Movie directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans
- Starring Arden Cho, Ahn Hyo-seop, May Hong, Ji-young Yoo, Yunjin Kim, Daniel Dae Kim, Ken Jeong, and Lee Byung-hun
- Released on June 20th, 2025
- Runtime: 100 minutes
For months, I kept hearing really good things about K-Pop Demon Hunters. Perhaps I went in with my expectations set a little TOO high, to be honest.
K-pop demon hunters isn’t a masterpiece, let me start with that. It didn’t make me cry, it didn’t make me think about, I don’t know, what it means to be human or whatever. But does a movie need to do any of those things to be enjoyable? Should we be holding all types of media to the same standards?
Forgive me for refusing to do my research on this, but I think KPDH is a kids’ movie. Some people think kids’ media is inherently less intelligent, or interesting, or GOOD than media made for adults. This is, of course, not true. Good kids’ media is often better than mediocre stuff for adults.
This very thing can be said for KPDH. For me, it strikes the perfect balance between being a fun movie that’s not too deep, whilst also having enough emotional depth to keep you invested. The plot and characters are fine, but they’re not where the movie really shines.
Where the movie shines is, of course, the music. Like, the music in this movie is phenomenal. It’s not often that the music in a movie is both wildly popular in the universe of the movie, as well as in the real world. K-Pop Demon Hunters manages to pull this off, and that’s enough to impress me.
All I missed in KPDH is a more thorough exploration of what it means to be part demon and if a demon is always inherently bad. The plot really made me believe that this would be its main theme, but this question remains unanswered, even though it’s very relevant to Rumi, the main character. Maybe they’ll explore this topic in the sequel. No way are they not doing a sequel to this.
- Short story written by Philip K. Dick
- Published 1956
- Standalone
The Minority Report is a classic science fiction story by Philip K. Dick, one of the grandfathers of the genre. As always with these classic stories, it is as much a window onto the time it was written as it is a window onto an imagined future. There are flying cars and off-world colonies, yes, but also punch-card computers and bread trucks.
The story revolves around the idea that three prescient mutants can predict future murders. Their babbling is input into a computer and at the other end, cards containing the names of a murderer and his victim come rolling out. The police go and apprehend them before the crime is committed. The system appears to be working well, until… the name of the chief of the police comes rolling out of the computer.
Against a backdrop of politics, the story then explores whether it is right or legal to lock up perpetrators of predicted crimes that they didn’t have a chance to actually commit, and the meaning and value of the predictions of crimes, if the predictions can paradoxically prevent themselves from coming true.
Like most classic science fiction, The Minority Report is about the concepts more than the characters, and as a short story, the worldbuilding is limited. That may make it a bit of a dry read for the modern audience, but it isn’t too long and well-paced. The concepts are well-thought out, and for those of you interested in stories about time travel and time paradoxes, it is well worth the time invested.
- Novel written by Ray Bradbury
- Published 19 October 1953
- Standalone
Listened to the audiobook with Penn Badgley. Well-read.
Fahrenheit 451 is one of those old, 1950s, science-fiction-of-ideas type novels. The idea in Fahrenheit 451 is straightforward: society has regressed intellectually, everyone only watches TV, and books gradually became obsolete until they were eventually even banned.
In telling this story, Bradbury clearly wants to warn us of totalitarian governments and their censorship, in the vein of 1984, but also of control and desensitisation via mass media, in the vein of Brave New World.
That is a lot to pack into a such a short novel, but Fahrenheit 451 stays on message throughout. Fahrenheit 451 contains little to no details on the time that passed between the 1950s and the fictional present and does not even explain much about the future society that the story is set in, other than the prohibition of books and the institution of the firemen that burn them.
To be honest, Bradbury doesn’t need much more to evoke the readers emotions because the image of book burning is so vivid and emblematic. In the 1950s, the Second World War and Nazism, as well as the communist dictatorship and accompanying censorship in the Soviet Union, loomed large in readers’ minds. Even now, though, more than 70 years after the publication date, the metaphor still hits home.
At the same time, I couldn’t help but feel that Fahrenheit 451 is a novel dripping in old man energy (yes, I know Bradbury was in his thirties when he wrote it). By that I mean to say that it appears that Bradbury is frustrated by a changing society and up in arms about those changes – radio, television, swift-moving cars… It appears he believes that there is a certain degeneration linked with these technological developments and that society must swear these off and return to simpler, more intellectual times.
Don’t get me wrong: I think Bradbury is right that television – and in particular, social media algorithms an smartphones, which he did not foresee – have indeed decreased people’s attention spans and maybe even fanned an anti-intellectual flame. But his conservative thinking appears a little black and white to me; not every change since the 1950s has been for the worse.
Fahrenheit 451 is a short novel, but I was not surprised to find out that it was originally even shorter. It is very focused on a couple of poignant but ultimately relatively straightforward ideas that I feel would have fitted perfectly in a novella-length tale. I understand that Bradbury initially wrote the story as a novella and his publisher asked him to double the length and make it into a small novel. I feel that explains why the novel is set up in a lean style with very few characters and little to no background, but nevertheless feels a little stretched out in certain places.
Fahrenheit 451 is based on a strong moral idea and gets its messages across clearly. It reads easy enough, has a couple of nice character moments and shows that certain issues we are grappling with today have been relevant for decades. At the same time, it is also very much a product of its time and, if I dare to be that honest, I don’t think Fahrenheit 451 is breathtakingly clever or prophetic. It is a good metaphor turned into a novella turned into a book. In the end, it is a classic and it is short, so I would certainly recommend you give it a try, if only to get in on the conversation.
- Novel written by Mary Shelley
- Published 1 January 1818
- Standalone
Listened to the audiobook with Simon Vance, loved his narration.
The first showing of Guillermo del Toro’s new Frankenstein movie at the Venice International Film Festival is coming up, so I figured it would be interesting to reread the original book to best prepare for the inevitable watch parties. Turns out the release on Netflix is only in the fall though. Unfortunately.
So back to the book. There a multiple ways to review a book like Frankenstein. If we look at it from the perspective of what Frankenstein did for the genre – and what it meant in 1818 – it is very difficult to overstate its importance. It is already incredible that a teenage girl could write this, but now consider she wrote it in the 1810s! 5/5.
It might be different if we look at it from the perspective of the 2020s. We know what Frankenstein meant for science fiction, but what if we look at it as a piece of entertainment rather than a piece of history?
I think there are a lot of elements to the story that wouldn’t fly in a modern publication. There are quite a few ways in which the story is simply old fashioned. For example, aside from Victor Frankenstein, the characters are pretty underdeveloped, especially the female ones; and the prose is very dramatic (to a level which is sometimes more funny than emotional).
In addition, there are a couple of nit-picky criticisms that I feel might have been resolved with some editorial l input in a revised version. For example, while the reader will understand that for the story to work the monster needs to learn basically everything somewhere, I still think it is a fair criticism that the way it actually happened was very convenient. And Frankenstein does a lot of thinking, but it just never seems to occur to him to tell anyone what is up, or to take action to prevent the monster from getting its way. I realise its not that type of book, of course, but I feel a modern version would have found ways to make it make more practical sense.
On the other hand, there is more than enough that carries over the 200 years since the book was written. The core message – of a person being driven to do unspeakable things because of unfair rejection by fellow humans, of unfair rejection by fellow humans because of immutable characteristics like appearance – is as relevant now as it was in 1818. And sure, the story is old and the prose is a little melodramatic, but that is also fun! It makes for a very atmospheric tale. And finally: it has a frame narrative, so that means I’m sold.
So overall: I enjoyed Frankenstein. I’m just a sucker for the classics. If I’m honest, I probably mostly liked it for the history attached to it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading for its own sake.
- Novel written by Alice Hoffman
- Published in 1995
I’ve heard a lot of good things about the movie Practical Magic, but I’ve never seen it. Still, it meant that I was intrigued when I found this novel at the thrift store, and I’m really glad I picked it up.
I read Practical Magic in the middle of summer. Though it’s a bit of a Halloween-y book, it’s perfect for the summer. The overall vibe of this book is very 90’s. It made me nostalgic for American summers that I’ve never actually personally experienced.
Is the plot particularly interesting? No. Are the characters super deep and compelling? Also no, though I would argue the Owens sisters are reasonably well developed. The side characters, however, are almost cardboard cutouts. Does every man fall in love at first sight in this book? Absolutely. However, as I was reading, none of that really bothered me. Practical Magic is American in the best way.
After finishing the novel, I found myself missing it. I suppose that means I should just watch the movie, but I think the fact that I would have liked to spend more time with the Owens family is a pretty good indication of how much I enjoyed Practical Magic.
If you’re looking for a very cosy read for late summer/early fall, this is it.
