Richard Garriott’s "Man on a Mission" Launches!
Shattered Moon very kindly reminded me this morning that the Richard Garriott-focused documentary, Man on a Mission, has been released. The documentary chronicles Richard Garriott’s efforts to follow in his father’s footsteps and journey into space.
Here’s the film’s trailer:
And here’s how Space.com describes the show:
Richard Garriott is not your ordinary nerd.
Yes, he is a self-proclaimed space fan and develops computer games for a living. But he’s also the millionaire founder of the “Ultima Online” computer game franchise, uses a robot to telecommute between New York and his Austin office, and is one of the few people ever to pay $30 million for a cosmic trip to the International Space Station.
And there’s one more thing: Richard Garriott is the son of Owen Garriott, a former NASA astronaut who flew on the U.S. Skylab station and space shuttle. He is the first American second-generation spaceflyer ever to follow a parent off the planet.
It’s that combination of spaceflight and computer games that comes through in “Man on a Mission,” a new documentary launching into theaters today (Jan. 13) across the United States. The film, directed by veteran documentary director Mike Woolf, chronicles Garriott’s 2008 flight to the International Space Station.
There’s been a lot of other Garriott-related coverage in the online media of late, so here’s a round-up of some of the recent interviews and appearances that Lord British has given and made:
- GameInformer has audio of an interview with Garriott, in which he discusses both Man on a Mission and what he has in mind next in his game development pursuits.
- Space.com has a 30-image gallery of stills from Man on a Mission.
- HomeStation Magazine has an interview with Richard Garriott, which is mostly focused on social networking and Portalarium.
- On the National Science and Engineering Week Facebook page, there are a handful of photos of Richard Garriott, who made an appearance at an event of theirs.
- Lord British also, evidently, made an appearance on Viasat Explorer recently.
- NPR also has a review of Man on a Mission which focuses on the “like father, like son” angle.
Also: While Richard Garriott was up in space, he evidently filmed a short horror movie entitled Apogee of Fear:
“Man on a Mission,” which opened Jan.13, chronicles Garriott’s journey to the station in October 2008, a trip that cost him $30 million of his own money. While up there, the video-game designer made a playful eight-minute film called “Apogee of Fear,” with some standout acting assistance from a Russian cosmonaut and two NASA astronauts.
“Apogee of Fear” is the first science-fiction movie ever made in space, Garriott said, and he would like to let the public see it. There has been some demand, with the Smithsonian Institution even asking to put the film in its permanent archives because of its historical value.
But NASA hasn’t given the necessary go-ahead, according to Garriott.
“NASA has, so far, decided that since it’s filmed onboard NASA hardware and uses NASA astronauts as actors, they have resisted me releasing it publicly,” Garriott told SPACE.com Wednesday (Jan. 11).
Hopefully we’ll get to see it one day!
Now if only Netflix would acknowledge it was out and let me watch it 🙁
(I am cheap and don’t want to pay $7 to rent it from iTunes :p)
“It’s just that the default answer is no,” Garriott said.
Also, I can’t find the damn torrent except for one with no seeds and the only peer is me. Fuck that shit man. Where’s the link to buy the DVD with a credit card? I need that one. Or the torrent one. Muahahaaahaaaaa!
Garriott wants to have kids so his legacy can live on. I don’t blame him. I’m having a kid now. Crazy… Time to kick the game into full gear, to provide.
“Apogee of Fear” is a testament to how crazy and visionary both Garriott is.
I mean who else, while provided the chance to go to space in the International Space Spation would think “Hey it’s a great opportunity to shot a horror movie!”
And budget of that movie is 30 mln $! Ultima IX costs less than this short! 😉
I agree with SERGORN. I’d die to see the film. What in the world could that fool Garriott have gotten the astronauts to do in his film? It’s possible that with some extra footage it could be edited into something quite awesome.
Also, it’s interesting that no one responded to my revelation that I was having a kid. I guess humans are just that expendable. Or maybe I’ve had one too many drunken tirades on this site and no one listens to a damn thing I say anymore. Maybe if I said I was going to name it “Richard Garriott Fishburne” or “Skara Brae Fishburne” someone would be all over it. Sometimes people really PMTFO, F…
Kevin: I did see the announcement, albeit late last night whilst…well, let’s just say I was in a semi-conscious stupor. But I made a mental note to put up an article (I’ve done a few baby announcements on the site).
So first, congratulations!
And second, the usual battery of questions: how far along is your wife? What’s the projected due date? Boy or girl? Are you excited?
Well i hope he has a great Mission.
If you like to find out why so many are interested stillin Richard Garriot…
well his high-light time of creating a game was 1999…
It was called Ultima Online Second Age.
And if you google: Ultima Onlie Second Age…it is BACK!
A Fan called Derrick and his Fans recreated this great Multiplayer Time!
Go and play it free! now!
Well you were no better off than myself when I posted it then! 🙂
She’s approximately 2.5 months pregnant. According to my calculations she’ll be due around the first or second week of August. The doctors say the 17th, but I’m not so sure about that.
We don’t know the gender yet, though it’s probably because it’s too early rather than not wanting to know; Maria can’t hold a secret to save her life so I’m sure she’ll find out at the first opportunity.
I’m a bit detached as far as compulsive human reactions are concerned, so I’m not sure how I feel about it. Part of me regrets bringing a new, innocent life into such a cruel, chaotic and patently evil world. As I fear for myself, I fear more for an innocent whose being I’m wholly responsible for. Part of me is excited that I can perhaps help it to have a good life and even possibly improve humanity’s lot. It’s a mixed blessing I suppose.
I’m sure you’re all about God showing us the path, things happening for a reason and a master plan under which the bad are punished and the good rewarded, but my far more cynical view stains my perception of what normal people consider a blessing. Not an attack on your faith, Ken, but an expression of my apprehension. I don’t care about my own life, but to see that I created a new one under equally hopeless conditions makes me feel like a real bastard. Maybe love can make up for that and something good can come of it.
Anyway, I liked that photo of you, your wife and your kids. The youngest gnawing on the shoe is priceless. 🙂 Things like that (knowing you’re a good person) give me hope that we can make something for ourselves amongst the intolerable inequity and injustice around us.
Sanctimonia:
What am I, a Calvinist? You know, it’s moments like these that used to drive me into the Gamespot forums to cuss out young American evangelicals…but I digress.
Don’t get me wrong; I certainly maintain that each human being exists as much due to the fact that God wills and loves (in an impelling sense of the term) for it to be so as we do due to the natural biological processes that foster procreation. And I will certainly concede that God hopes that each of us will perceive and love Him back and elect to be an instrument of His love and will in the world.
But being Catholic, I’m not exactly a fatalist, and airy talk of “things happen[ing] for a reason” raises my ire by many, many eighths. And do not get me started as to my thoughts on the erroneous and outright heretical notion that certain persons are inexorably damned.
I’m actually more in agreement with you here than you might expect. Especially with what you said just before:
I’m often in the same frame of mind regarding my two girls. On the one hand, I’m hugely grateful and very humbled to have them in my life. I do view them as a gift from God, and in my own ways rejoice in many of the things that they do (and in how damn cute they are).
And yet…and yet, right?
I desire for my daughters to know and love God better than I do, desire their salvation above even my own, desire to be some manner of competent witness for them. I desire not so much to shelter them from the vicissitudes of the world as to prepare them to face its many ugly perils and challenges. I despair at the state of the world they are already growing up into; I fear for them trying to fend for themselves in the world they are likely to know as adults.
And yeah, I sometimes scratch my head and wonder whether it was a bright idea to have kids, to bring them in to a place that so often seems given over to something very dark and malevolent.
And yet…and yet.
It’s hard to describe what being a father is like to anyone who doesn’t have kids of his own running about in his home. You’re already a father, of course, but things change when the little kidlet is on this side of your wife’s belly button. Your perspective just changes, and it’s really not easy to describe how.
At least, I have no words for it.
Heh…yeah, that picture…the whole attempt at taking that family portrait was just a comedy, through and through. The outtakes from the shoot are even funnier. That’s why I won’t pay for family portraits, incidentally.
And yeah, there is hope. My wife and I worry endlessly about how things will turn out for our girls…but there’s never not a day where one or both of them won’t do something that’s cute, joy-inducing…and even hope-inspiring.
Although I still find it to be a troubling indicator of future trends when my eldest (three years old at present) climbs up on a table and drinks from the little toy pitcher that came with her kitchen playset. That could spell trouble in fifteen-ish years.
While this is obviously not presumed to be media of the highest caliber of journalistic integrity, it accurately reflects the larger state of inter-species affairs:
cracked.com/article_15816_the-5-most-horrifying-bugs-in-world.html
At least it wasn’t human atrocities, right? The article’s best take-away quote is “Nature is fucking hardcore”.
“But being Catholic, I’m not exactly a fatalist, and airy talk of “things happen[ing] for a reason” raises my ire by many, many eighths.”
I hope not least among those eighths was the belief in free will.
“Don’t get me wrong; I certainly maintain that each human being exists as much due to the fact that God wills and loves (in an impelling sense of the term) for it to be so as we do due to the natural biological processes that foster procreation. And I will certainly concede that God hopes that each of us will perceive and love Him back and elect to be an instrument of His love and will in the world.”
I’m assuming by “human being” and “us” you place homosapien in a different category. To see so many births (mammals, reptiles, fishes, birds, amphibians, invertebrates, plantae, mold, bacteria, etc.) follow the same biological “circle of life”, including mothers eating their young, I can’t believe that a power higher than nature causes it to happen. Nature is a cruel mother, and she seems to rule all (including children, sadly).
That being said your discussion of your own family is helpful. I wonder what kind of family Garriott grew up in. I know a few facts, but not really what daily life was like. One thing I treasured from my teenage years was unrestricted access to a computer. I know times have changed, but think that encouraging exploration and creativity is probably a virtue to facilitate as a parent.
As an aside, if the shit did hit the fan you and I would probably be on Team Freedom rather than Team Toe The Line. Conceding to you the basic tenets of Christianity, you’re more open-minded than most ignorant bullshitters out there speaking their poorly-thought-out reasons for belief. I don’t like religion, but I have great respect for people driven and smart enough to explore what it means intellectually. Laziness, not pride, is the ultimate sin, and the ignorant bastard is the lazy bastard.
Anyway, my goals are to ensure my child knows it’s loved, provide for it physically, emotionally and intellectually, and nurture it at key points such that it never has to worry about being unable to rise above the swamps of human societies.
As I said, I’m not a Calvinist. I totally believe in free will. Indeed, there’s little point in believing in things like moral agency or morality in general if one jettisons the idea of free will.
Quite! There’s that whole “image and likeness of God” thing, for one…and the more general observation that by all observations, ours is the only Earthbound* species possessed of the faculties necessary for reason and the capacity for moral agency. Birds, bees, bunnies, and all the rest do not possess these things.
Indeed. There is much in the world which seems brutal and cruel — this “circle of life” stuff to which you refer — but which is nothing of the kind when done by creatures that lack the capacity for reason and moral agency. Though to us who possess such faculties, it seems so, because we recognize that it would be were we to perpetrate such acts.
Yes, a double standard is present in this analysis; it’s immoral for a human to kill and eat her children, but neither moral nor immoral for a hedgehog to do likewise. But then, there is quite a measure of difference between a human and a hedgehog, despite the fact — or maybe because of it? — that at a genetic level the two species are probably more similar that different.
There’s a bit of detail in The Official Book of Ultima, but I’d imagine that in the end, you’d probably have to ask the man himself.
That’s my take on things. My wife encourages our eldest to do things like colour and paint. We let her watch a few shows on TV, like The Backyardigans (which encourage, at some level, the use of wild imagination in play), or stuff like Winnie the Pooh (let’s just say that it took Britannia to replace the Hundred Acre Wood as the place to where my imagination would run and dwell**)…though in general, we try to limit her time in front of the glowbox.
And by all indications, she’s developing a very active and innovative imagination that she translates well into her playtime. The “adventures” she narrates through and acts out are often epic in their scope.
Unless you ask my cousin. Then I’m a backward Neanderthal clinging to outdated moral precepts which are far too ethnocentric and Western-biased to be relevant in today’s world.
Of course, she says the same thing about the rules of logic, so…grain of salt, I guess.
I’m glad you don’t see me as a closed-minded nut, but all I’m really trying to be is Catholic; I try not to espouse views which contradict Church teaching. Granted, most of the religious dialogue in America is Protestant-flavored, so I can understand why “my” views on matters might seem very different from the norm.
We call it “sloth”.
Ironically we agree on a lot of major ethical choices, though the rough edges are always points of contention. Maybe it’s because my parents are Christian (Baptist –> Methodist), but more probably because the major religions have treasure chests of practical and instinctively appealing principles which may be cherry-picked in order to lead an honorable life. I’m not saying that you cherry pick (although I suppose we all do to a degree), but that I do.
I’m agnostic about the idea of free will, depending on how you define it. I do think we have basic control over our bodies’ abilities to speak, move and think privately, but I’m afraid a social system of apartheid, fear, ignorance and apathy has eroded our ability to help ourselves without repercussion. I also think that on a subatomic level we are predestined, which is my own paradox though not a religious one.
“There’s that whole “image and likeness of God” thing, for one…”
I like that idea. Man should try to live up to the idea of God and stop acting like f[&*%]ing [censored]. Is it really that hard?
“…and the more general observation that by all observations, ours is the only Earthbound* species possessed of the faculties necessary for reason and the capacity for moral agency. Birds, bees, bunnies, and all the rest do not possess these things.”
Many studies over several generations, including recent ones, have shown that non-human species are capable of experiencing and do experience most patterns of behavior and many signs of empathy shared by humans. That we still don’t really know how most species communicate (including our own) shows our own arrogance and laziness/sloth.
“There is much in the world which seems brutal and cruel — this “circle of life” stuff to which you refer — but which is nothing of the kind when done by creatures that lack the capacity for reason and moral agency. Though to us who possess such faculties, it seems so, because we recognize that it would be were we to perpetrate such acts.”
Then we lack the facility for reason and moral agency, as we understand it but continue to act like animals regardless. I wouldn’t be surprised if other species had ideas about God. If we understood their language better and could listen we’d probably hear them. We’d be humbled that we weren’t alone any more.
“But then, there is quite a measure of difference between a human and a hedgehog, despite the fact — or maybe because of it? — that at a genetic level the two species are probably more similar that different.”
One level of difference is that despite our hubris in believing we’re somehow more important than all the other people we still get eaten quite easily (and regularly). As an eagle picks up a mouse, we get hit by drunk drivers and friendly fire. Or eaten by bears and great cats if you’re adventurous. A police state is when the lions only just look at you because they’re not hungry enough yet.
“There’s a bit of detail in The Official Book of Ultima, but I’d imagine that in the end, you’d probably have to ask the man himself.”
Richard Garriott probably has way too many people asking him things on a regular basis. He has a lot of stuff going on, as I do, so while I’d like to have a pint with him I don’t think it would be time best spent unless we were really just chilling and happened to be in the same room (unlikely).
“Unless you ask my cousin. Then I’m a backward Neanderthal clinging to outdated moral precepts which are far too ethnocentric and Western-biased to be relevant in today’s world.”
Your cousin’s right, except it’s not just you, it’s all of us. The first step toward recovery is to admit that there’s a mistake (problem). In human existence there is at least one mistake, as we can agree that things aren’t fair, just, and harmonious. More probably there are other sub-mistakes growing from the main one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Acre_Wood
Cool map. Didn’t know about that one. Very Zelda-ish or Ultima Underworld.
“I’m glad you don’t see me as a closed-minded nut, but all I’m really trying to be is Catholic; I try not to espouse views which contradict Church teaching. Granted, most of the religious dialogue in America is Protestant-flavored, so I can understand why “my” views on matters might seem very different from the norm.”
Defend the faith. Don’t worry. Even if there isn’t a soul or a god/God there is still hope. Big fan of augmentation and such. Immortality’s only as good as your best equipment. Hopefully soon they can do the whole endoskeleton/exoskeleton combo with kung fu grip.
Just kidding, of course.