From: no relation Subject: Re: TO THE END OF THE WORLD and LAWNMOWER MAN: Film Reviews? Date: 27 Jan 92 22:47:59 GMT Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz; Open Access Computing Um. This covers 'End of the World'; I haven't see Lawnmower Man. It answers the main question, about the tech, and doesn't cover whether the film is actually any good (but I liked it, and the soundtrack). Hopefully I won't spoil too much, but here's a ctrl-L: EOW is in a way two movies packaged as one. The whole thing is just over two and a half hours, with a significant change in tone about halfway through. Both parts, however, have a common theme of hi-tech toys and goodies. The toys in the first part have to do with a global network that you can use to find out where someone's been using their credit cards and what for, that sort of thing; a sort of global net a la Gibson and Sterling and whoever else. The second part involves using the visual cortex as both a recorder and a playback unit; while the details don't involve VR, the technical system could be adapated to such a use. Bottom line: Near-future. Sorta cyberpunk; deals with technoshock, but the style isn't as grim as cyberpunk literature tends to be. While all the technogadgets do touch on VR, it's certainly not what the film is about - definitely nowhere near the degree that Brainstorm('s) was. Tom Wylie