An outpost of reason in a county of conservatives » « The UK is having an election on our national holiday?

I have a phenomenal idea for a horror movie!

It would much scarier and less stupid than this one, and much cheaper to make.

Imagine a world in which most of the insects are dying, told from the perspective of the perpetrators, not the victims. The monsters who have murdered all the pesky little bugs wander around their homes, wondering why it’s so quiet, but appreciating the absence of mosquitos. Slowly it dawns on them that they don’t hear any birds, either, and they notice that all their fishing trips to the lake turn up fruitless. The more discerning members of the community are horrified to learn that the spiders are missing.

Maybe we could have a few species that are exempt from the holocaust. They’d probably be ticks. The killers’ pets are infested, large mammals are dying in agony. Crops fail. The protagonists respond by poisoning the environment further, trying to confer safety for their few chosen favored food organisms. Unforeseen consequences arise, worsening the problem.

It would be one of those tense, slow-build movies, where the danger increases and the outcome becomes unavoidably inevitable. All attempts to restore the planet are futile. It would not have a happy ending.

Maybe we could title it Silent Spring. Has that been taken already?

OK, how about Silent Earth?

Damn. I guess we’re fucked.

An outpost of reason in a county of conservatives » « The UK is having an election on our national holiday?

Comments

  1. Reginald Selkirk says

    … but appreciating the absence of mosquitos

    In other words, a fantasy.

  3. raven says

    The protagonists respond by poisoning the environment further, trying to confer safety for their few chosen favored food organisms.

    It was done a long time ago.

    Brian Aldiss and Earthworks.

    Wikipedia: The novel is set in a world of environmental catastrophe and extreme socio-economic inequality. Outside crowded cities controlled by a police state, a class of wealthy and powerful “Farmers” exploit a rural prison labour population and hunt down subversive “Travellers” who have broken free of social controls.
    and
    Goodreads: Choked, disease-ridden towns, robots and prison gangs tending the bare, poison drenched countryside are all characteristic of Knowle’s world; only in Africa is the soil still fertile and the people still relatively vital.

    I read it in the 1970s and it was depressing enough that I never read it again.
    I still have my copy.

  4. says

    The horror story is the protagonists realizing they’re the real monsters only after they’ve messed up the world too much to fix anything.

    Obligatory dunking on space techbros: Ecology is hard. If we can’t clean up the one we’ve got, how are we supposed to build one from scratch on a much more hostile planet or moon?

  7. says

    As PZ said, ‘Damn. I guess we’re fucked.’
    I reply: The problem is that we were very foolish in who we allowed to be our sex partners. Thanks fossil fueled fuckheads, now go fuck yourselves you ahole corporations and your CEO’s, too.

  8. birgerjohansson says

    The last episode of Disney’s 1990s animatronic TV series “Dinosaurs” comes to mind.

    A more recent example is William Gibson’s ‘Jackpot’ trilogy
    (The two first titles are The Peripheral and Agency)

  9. drew says

    they notice that all their fishing trips to the lake turn up fruitless

    Sounds more like bobbing for apples than fishing.

    Unforeseen consequences arise

    Like Michael Crichton, then?

  15. StevoR says

    Problem that’s no moon movie.

    This is the reality and people are scared enough by it still. At least not the ones making it happen.

  16. StevoR says

    _________________________ not ^

    Peopel are NOT scared enough of it. yet.

    (They will be.)