The Day...

Even though the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still has gotten mixed reviews, (The original TDESS is beloved.) the notion of man being a virus is not far fetched at all given we are the only species that knowingly pollutes the environment at global levels in order to "improve our lot in life". On the tech side, the film basically works, especially regarding Gort, the nanotech/silicon entity that is truly majestic and frightening at the same time.

Both flicks resonate, the original with nuclear concerns brought about by the cold war, the latter with the environment and the spectre of global warming.

Interestingly enough, an author who, I think, got inspired by the first TDTESS was Arthur C. Clark as he wrote two masterpieces that dealt with the environment and with advanced civilizations. In The Deep Range, the issue was man's right to kill whales as Clark sensed that cetaceans were intelligent even though, in the book, "earth's population is fed principally from the sea--on whale products or from plankton farms."

In Childhood' End, the circumstances directly relate to The Day..."Childhood's End explores humanity's transformation and integration with an interstellar "hive mind" or Overmind. It also touches upon such matters as cruelty to animals, man's inability to live in a utopian society, and the apocalyptic concept of The Last Man on Earth. The 1953 edition of the story begins at the height of the Cold War, some thirty years after the fall of the Third Reich, with attempts by both the United States and the Soviet Union to launch nuclear rockets into space for military purposes, threatening imminent doom for the planet."

Now that I have seen and read all the material quoted in this article, the question I keep asking myself is, "What is the survival rate of civilizations in this universe?" because at the rate we're going, we may not make it.