53 - A Very Xeno Christmas! with Evan "Skytree" Snyder

Merry X-(is for Xenomorph)-mas, everyone! This week – in a brazen display of anachronism – original Future Fossils cohost, electronic music producer, and sci fi aficionado Evan Snyder and I go deep on what we liked and disliked about Alien: Covenant, and speculate on how this film fits into the still-murky larger mythos of Ridley Scott’s expanded Alien universe. We get into atheist Scott’s weird fixation with the Bible; how the Alien films represent and handle philosophical questions about the relationship between humanity and technology; and why people from the science-fictional future ARE SO DAMN STUPID. Evan’s Music: http://skytree.bandcamp.com Related Reading: “Reading Necronomicon at the New York Comic Con” https://www.patreon.com/posts/poem-reading-at-10621994 In This Episode We Discuss: • Why are people are so damn stupid in the Alien movies – is it bad writing, or a realistic understanding of how dependent we will one day be on artificial cognitive augmentation? • Nicholas Carr’s book The Glass Cage: Automation and Us • Smartphone addiction & technology as prosthesis • Was the neutrino burst that hit the Covenant an accident, or planned/intended? • Is David actually rebelling, or still continuing to serve the Weyland-Yutani corporate program? • Easter Egg: How do the various LV planets of the Alien franchise line up with chapters of Leviticus? • Are the Engineers themselves bioengineered artificial organisms? • The xenomorph life cycle: Why do we even have an Alien Queen? Is “egg-morphing” canonical? • WTF was going on in that seemingly contrived last Daniels/Tennessee/Protomorph fight scene? • The motif of creativity and the inability to create in the Alien movies • NerdWriter’s great video on Logan and the extension of genres into self-aware post-genres * Hideo Kojima about the Alien franchise * How Blade Runner movies and Aliens films may be related • How this film addresses society’s concerns about artificial intelligence * Are the alien prequels actually about the production of the Alien franchise itself? * Wall-E, Idiocracy, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element * Christmas, Christ, and Antichrist in the Alien films * Is Ridley Scott trolling us all? * Bizarre (fan-shipped) possibility of a Star Trek/Alien crossover Subscribe to this show: iTunes (iOS) / Stitcher (Android) Join the Facebook Discussion GroupSupport this show and get cool stuff Like this podcast and want to show support? Make a donation! BTC = 1iLHDNzpRMiXn13ekB8iVEsvVFkRzkGVe LTC = Ldg3JS4T2m8gFd8kQPaLpjcAiAXxdVthWQ ETH = 0xddF0524510d6d802c3e9b0740D48CF893425664D BCH = 1XyN5SRpQF7AuXnCvAEjNXMMMYRCW7Rgf DASH = XwckYNsyYThWozWJqrtpeguEu9BAqi9gPj Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe