Yeah, you would have thought
that after having twelve years to write the bloody thing, he could have come up with a better name than "Unobtainium."

Mind you, I can't help but think he could have come up with a more imaginative plot that wasn't completely predictable at every fucking turn...
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 22 Feb 2010, 11:16, 2 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

I wasn't sure about the design of the beasts either...

If has 6 legs I want to know why it has six legs? Six legs are terribly hard to run with apparently.

I like the Amber Spyglass and the Mulalfa (sp) who had funny hooked claws and diamond shaped bodies, but the reasoning was sound(ish) they used seed pods as wheels and scooted around on lava flows.

I like that because Pullamn put some thought into not just the beasties but they're reason for being and their evolution.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Mon 22 Feb 2010, 11:22, Reply)

I think it's the lack of imagination again...
"Hey we need something which is big and scary, like a rhino. But it's on this different planet, so we'd better make it look less like a rhino. Hmm...well, let's give it a hammerhead thing instead of a horn...um...and...I don't know, add an extra pair of legs?"

Although in my opinion, any alien that they design has to be weighed in the balance against HR Giger's creation, and so will usually be found wanting.
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 22 Feb 2010, 11:33, Reply)

Unobtanium was what they made that fucking stupid magma-sub out of in The Core as well, I think.
It's particularly stupid naming because Unobtanium is something that physicists (mostly, I think) sometimes actually use as a term for something they'd like but can't get hold of (antimatter, for example), so using it as a name for something you can actually MINE OUT OF THE GROUND is about as wrong as you can get.
(wellgroomedwookiee is a filthy-minded hobgoblin, Mon 22 Feb 2010, 11:32, Reply)

Yeah, but
"Drillingitoutofthegroundisabitofapainium" doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well...
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 22 Feb 2010, 11:34, Reply)

But with Science! input
you could have a name that is just shit, rather than a name that is shit and WRONG. Or, possibly, you might even end up with a name that's quite good.
(wellgroomedwookiee is a filthy-minded hobgoblin, Mon 22 Feb 2010, 11:39, Reply)

Frank Herbert had the right idea,
Give it a colloquial name like "the spice" and then it doesn't require a name which offends scientists, is shit and is wrong.

(Though of course, casting Sting with ginger hair and overly revealing costumes has kind of ruined that film for me, thank you very much David Lynch...)
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 22 Feb 2010, 11:43, Reply)