I watched the Duncan Jones movie Moon again this evening. I watched it about a year ago and enjoyed it then, and thought Sam Rockwell did an amazing job. On second viewing it is a little slow in places, but intentionally so I think, as it puts you in the shoes of the mining facility caretaker character isolated on the dark-side of the moon.
I’ve had a recurring futuristic dream that might contain a little of this movie in it. In it I run a mining ship that is harvesting the asteroid belt for whatever I can make enough profit on that will let me afford to go out and do it all again. The ship was built for multiple people — a family — but they died in an accident before we could make the dream a reality. So I have decided to go on alone and do it all myself, accompanied only by a dog who is a clone of a dog that I have had (at the time the dreams are set,) through multiple “generations”.
A large part of this idea is actually stolen from another sci-fi story, one of my favorites that I still have in my much-depleted physical book “library”. Namely Merchanter’s Luck by C. J. Cherryh. It too features a solitary guy running a ship meant for many on long, solitary merchant runs. He lives a lonely life, but when the story starts it seems he kind of likes it that way. Eventually he gets involved in an adventure, finds love and a new ‘family’, and of course, lives happily ever after. It sounds like I’m belittling the story, but not really. It really is a fun bit of ‘hard’ sci-fi that I strongly recommend.
Now back to these dreams the movie Moon reminds me of. These solitary-confinement dreams are actually calm, relaxing dreams. I guess I enjoy the thought of complete solitude. I’m sure though that it would begin to drive me batty in time, and I would have to make a run to ‘civilization’ to cash in what I had mined and connect with humanity for a while. Ironically another similar fantasy/daydream I have is on the other end of the time spectrum. It takes place in the past, but basically its the same story. I’m a miner in the mountains of Colorado during the boom days working my own stake, and only rarely going into ‘town’.
Anyway, I streamed the movie Moon for free on the Crackle.com Roku channel, and I highly recommend it. I may have to buy a copy of this movie for my library at some point, as it definitely is a rare example of ‘hard’ sci-fi movies like 2001, 2010, Outland, etc.