something from slashdot

Something I wrote over on Slashdot.

The story of the original Matrix was nothing new to most fans of sci-fi, as the concept of the Matrix goes back to the nightmare fiction of Harlan Ellison,

The problem is that your average "sci-fi" fan these days doesn't read at all. They watch movies, play video games and bitch at each other on message boards. The only books they ever read are novelizations of movies and horrible Star Trek books. The only thing they know about Ellison is that he wrote "The City on the Edge of Forever" episode of Star Trek.

So the philosophy of The Matrix came as a surprise to them.

The first Matrix wasn't bad, but it could have been a lot better if Keanu hadn't been handed lines like "What's an EMP?" to explain to the members of the audience what it is.

I mean, come on, any "hacker god" like Neo was supposed to be would know what an EMP was. A real hacker god could have built one in his basement.