1727 – Machine Mandate universe by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (novels and short stories)

Benjanun Sriduangkaew (on Goodreads)

---

Blog of Benjanun Sriduangkaew https://beekian.wordpress.com/

---

“Benjanun Sriduangkaew writes love letters to strange cities, beautiful bugs, and the future. Her work has appeared in Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Phantasm Japan, The Dark, and year’s bests. She has been shortlisted for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer and her debut novella Scale-Bright has been nominated for the British SF Association Award.” (Clarkesworld Magazine description)

---

The Machine Mandate

---

A space opera universe where artificial intelligences have achieved independence from humanity and formed the collective known as the Mandate. All titles are standalones and have different protagonists (all of whom are lesbians), though some recurring characters appear throughout. (from beekian.wordpress.com)

---

Machine’s Last Testament (novel)

---

Where Machines Run with Gold (free short story with the same characters from Now Will Machines Hollow the Beast)

---

Then Will the Sun Rise Alabaster (short story with the same characters from Now Will Machines Hollow the Beast)

---

Made of Knives (free short story with the same characters from And Shall Machines Surrender)

---

And Shall Machines Surrender (novella)

---

Now Will Machines Hollow the Beast (novella)

---

1724 – Anything for Jackson (2020)

Anything for Jackson is a 2020 horror film written by Keith Cooper and directed by Justin G. Dyck. The film stars Sheila McCarthy, Julian Richings, Konstantina Mantelos and Josh Cruddas. The entire movie was made for $250,000. 

“There’s something deliciously subversive about the backstory to this offbeat horror film, which was made in Canada. Director Justin G Dyck and screenwriter Keith Cooper have collaborated on a long list of treacly, holiday-themed, made-for-TV movies with titles such as A Very Country Christmas, Christmas With a View and A Christmas Village. Anything for Jackson, however, is a riotously gory, impish inversion of all things yuletide, in that it stars sweet-featured elderly character actors Sheila McCarthy and Julian Richings as grieving grandparents Audrey and Henry Walsh, who kidnap pregnant Shannon Becker (Konstantina Mantelos) in order to perform a satanic ritual on her. It’s as if Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer, the little old couple who lived next door in Rosemary’s Baby, got to be the stars of their own movie.” (Leslie Felperin review / theguardian)

With blood-soaked gore leaking onto the pristine snow and a unique spin on satanic rituals, Anything For Jackson will appease anti-Yuletide viewers looking to immerse themselves in icy depths of unsettling horror. (Rachel West)

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

1723 – Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski (2018)

Stanisław Szukalski (13 December 1893 – 19 May 1987) was a Polish (self-taught) sculptor and painter who became a part of the Chicago Renaissance. In 1930s Poland he enjoyed fame as a nationalist sculptor. He also developed the pseudoscientific–historical theory of Zermatism, positing that all human culture was derived from post-deluge Easter Island and that humankind was locked in an eternal struggle with the Sons of Yeti (“Yetinsyny”), the offspring of Yeti and humans.

Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski is a 2018 documentary film directed by Irek Dobrowolski, written by Stephen Cooper and Irek Dobrowolski and starring Stanislav Szukalski, Glenn Bray and Robert Williams. (wiki)

imdb

1722

timespace coordinates: 2010’s Detroit (after the upheaval)

1715

timespace coordinates: Petrified Forest National Park, Black Mesa (Warm Springs, Arizona) 1936

The Petrified Forest – imdb

1713 – Monsters of Man (2020)

timespace coordinates: 2020’s Cambodia

A robotics company vying to win a lucrative military contract team up with a corrupt CIA agent to conduct an illegal live field test. They deploy four weaponised prototype robots into a suspected drug manufacturing camp in the Golden Triangle, assuming they’d be killing drug runners that no one would miss. (Official Website)

imdb

1710 – Afghanistan: The Great Game (documentary | TV mini-series 2012)

Afghanistan: The Great Game – A Personal View by Rory Stewart is a 2012 documentary in two parts written and presented by Rory Stewart that tells the story of foreign intervention by Britain, Russia, and the United States in Afghanistan from the 19th century to the present day. (wiki)

imdb   /   The_Great_Game