Science Fiction Part 6 – The Dependable
The sixth tier of the science fiction ranking. Cronenberg, Garland, Wise and Frakes, plus the television that earned its place.
Tag: Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy is a villain with no face, which makes it hard to write and satisfying when it works. This tag collects reviews of films and fiction where the system is the antagonist, and what the form does to a protagonist.
2000sDistrict 9 (2009) Review
District 9 (2009) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A first-time director shot an alien occupation film in a real Soweto township for thirty million dollars, cast his friend who had never acted, and got a Best…
1980sBrazil (1985) Review
Brazil (1985) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A clerical error kills the wrong man and a whole film proceeds from a typo. The most internally consistent world in the genre, and Gilliam fought Universal for two…
BureaucracyDouglas Adams Day: The Comedy of Bureaucracy
Adams wrote a radio comedy that became five novels selling over fourteen million copies, missed nearly every deadline he was given, and died at forty-nine. His method was to take the machinery of science fiction and point it at ordinary…
Book ReviewsThe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Hapless Arthur Dent is dragged across the galaxy after Earth is demolished for a hyperspace bypass, in a gloriously absurd comic SF classic. Endlessly quotable, brilliantly inventive, and genuinely hilarious, it gave the world 42, the Babel fish, and don't…
Book ReviewsCatch-22
The novel that gave the language the phrase catch-22 itself: a savage, absurdist masterpiece of war and bureaucracy, darkly hilarious and genuinely furious beneath the comedy. Its deliberately disorienting structure rewards patience. A landmark of satire, held from the top…
1950s
BureaucracyFilms With the Best Worldbuilding
Twenty films that build worlds you believe in before anyone explains them — from Blade Runner's environmental history to Princess Mononoke's moral complexity. Six core worldbuilding techniques extracted from the best in cinema, with craft lessons fiction writers can apply…
2010sThe Adjustment Bureau (2011) Review
The Adjustment Bureau earns its 9 by doing something most high-concept films fail at completely: it makes the concept personal without letting the concept. The idea, that a bureaucracy of angelic agents manages human fate, adjusting events whenever people deviate…
Bureaucracy20 Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Writing Exercises with Craft Mechanics
20 exercises exploring systemic pressure, normalized absurdity, compliance costs, and how people adapt to broken systems.