Love, Death & Robots: major SF authors in a new anthology Netflix series

[ctg]

I was recommending it to my kids - no way now.

So, I put in NSFW and you were thinking kids will watch it???? Maybe everything I do just doesn't work.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

So, I put in NSFW and you were thinking kids will watch it???? Maybe everything I do just doesn't work.

See above. One of my kids is an adult now the other is younger but is of Deadpool age. This means drawing a line is harder these days.

 

[ctg]

Blindspot - Vitaliy Shushko

A gang of cyborg thieves stage a high-speed heist of a heavily armoured convoy.

Very short. Very old school cartoon style, but same goes as well to the script as it reminds me stuff from all they back in the 80's. I personally liked this cyberpunk tale, and I never would have thought something like this would be appearing on the small screen. When the blindspot appears, it's brilliant.

Ice Age - Michael Swanwick

A young couple moves into an apartment and finds a lost civilisation inside their antique freezer.

The only entry so far that is mixing realistic CGI with real life footage. The tale is super intriguing Alternate History/Urban Fantasy and it's mostly funny. You could write a whole book or make a movie about it. I really like that they showed the whole arc of a civilisation advancing towards inevitable death as if the fridge had somehow developed a temporal space anomaly in it.

Alternate Histories - John Scalzi

Want to see Hitler die in a variety of comically fantastic ways? Now you can. Welcome to Multiversity!

Another very short, and another Scalzi's work. Modern cartoon. Speculative SF. Show dicks, tits and bums, so NSFW. But for a man who likes TT and wierdness, I didn't feel a pull from this shorty. It's strange because I usually like Scalzi's work. I liked the rats.

The Secret War - David W. Amendola

Elite units of the Red Army fight an unholy evil deep in the ancient forests of Siberia.

A hyper realistic CGI SF, set in the alternative history back in the 1940's. Very nice script. Superb voice work. Some very graphic scenes, NSFW. I really enjoyed this dark, sad tale.

 

[Susan Boulton]

Knowing the source material aka : SNAFU Anthologies from Cohesion Press, I knew more or less what to expect. Some worked, and I enjoyed. Some were very Meh..... to the point of being annoying. The sexual exploitative elements were actually a lot milder than I thought they would be, knowing, as I said the source material, and the sub genre of the SF genre.

 

[ctg]

It took wired quite a bit of time to get this article written.

If you haven't figured it out by the time you see a young Hitler being fellated by a Viennese sex worker, Love, Death & Robots isn't your average Netflix show.

Of course, if you haven't figured it out, you probably haven't been paying attention: "Alternate Histories," which features said act being performed upon said icon of evil, is the 17th of 18 episodes in the animated anthology. By that point, you'll have seen full frontal nudity (male, female, and demonic); you'll also have seen a zero-G rendition of 127 Hours that deserves every Foley Art award possible, plentiful crushed heads, and even more plentiful arcing ichorous spews, and a sex scene that looks like the result of Cinemax becoming a game developer. You may not want to watch with your youth group leader is all I'm saying.

The anthology, from a team of executive producers that includes David Fincher and Deadpool director Tim Miller, is a viscerally enjoyable (and just plain visceral) conflagration of the senses. It does a great many things very well, a few not so well, and takes absolutely nothing seriously. But most importantly, it signals that Netflix isn't just paying lip service to the spirit of experimentation. The more naked and gleaming the streaming platform is willing to become, the more urgent its programming will be—and the better it will withstand the coming

'Love, Death & Robots' and the Rise of NSFW Netflix

 

[Brian G Turner]

you see a young Hitler being fellated by a Viennese sex worker

That's in the show? Seriously?!

 

[ctg]

That's in the show? Seriously?!

Yes, Alternate Histories, by John Scalzi. Two posts up. I gave NSFW for that scene alone.

 

[REBerg]

A veritable smorgasbord of entertainment -- horror, humor and SF in digestible, snack-sized servings.
Some duds, but overall worthwhile watching. Definitely earns its TV-MA rating.
I hope Netflix plans more.

 

[Rodders]

Bumping this. Having recently gotten Netflix I finally watched this over the weekend. Some really good stories. My personal favourite was probably Lucky 13.

It was good to see Alistair Reynolds on the screen.

Does anyone know if it’s returning for a second season?

 

[ctg]

Does anyone know if it’s returning for a second season?

The second season has been commissioned. When it comes out, we don't know and we certainly cannot be certain it would be this year, because the corona is affecting soo many things.

 

[Toby Frost]

I saw half a dozen of these a while back. I felt that the lighter, more whimsical ones were better: the "darker" they got, the more puerile and computer-gamey they felt. Fish Night and Ice Age were particularly good. More slick than deep, overall.

 

[Guttersnipe]

"Beyond the Aquila Rift" horrified me in so many ways. "Three Robots" is my favorite so far, in a great part due to the triangular robot's joking.

 

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[Rodders]

Looks good and i can't wait to binge series two.

Nice that S3 is approved, too.

 

[Matteo]

I've only just got around to sorting out Netflix on the tv (though my wife has been improving her Spanish by watching Spanish shows/films with Spanish subtitles for a while on the laptop) so have only seen a few of these this week.

Sonnie's Edge had a great fight sequence and a nice twist, Beyond the Aquila Drift looked gorgeous but I would have liked a little more expanation - and narrowly avoids gratuitous nudity* as it was the guy's fantasy, Three Robots was funny, clever, cute, Secret War was another great looking piece and had a good story, Ice Age was good, The Witness had a fantastic twist but I thought the fetish club was gratuitous (the story would have worked without it) and the jump-cuts(?) and loud music was distracting, Suits was OK, but the final shot didn't really make a awful lot of sense, Sucker of Souls was nothing special, When the Yoghurt Took Over was clever and very funny - my favourite so far.

As someone else has said, certainly a Heavy Metal vibe about the stories - which is fine - but I hope there is more of the lighter material.

*hmm...maybe.

 

[ctg]

As someone else has said, certainly a Heavy Metal vibe about the stories - which is fine - but I hope there is more of the lighter material.

Thing with the Heavy Metal is that they have now own studio, with those famous artists lining up for work on their animated stuff. So it's not really fair to compare this to the Heavy Metal, even if both shows naked bodies and other things. But do you mean with the lighter stuff comedy or something else?

 

[Matteo]

I meant the comedy/quirky stories.

 

[Dave]

Season 2 hasn't come to UK Netflix yet. I expect it will come soon?

 

[ctg]

Season 2 hasn't come to UK Netflix yet. I expect it will come soon?

This week. Friday.

 

[ctg]

Spoiler: NSFW - 2nd Trailer - "Sorry kids..."