Ray Bradbury: “I Am Not Afraid of Robots. I Am Afraid of People” (1974)

in Letters, Literature, Sci Fi, Technology | August 4th, 2014

BradburyRobotLetter

Any­one remem­ber Michael Crichton’s West­world (or the Simp­sons par­o­dy)? In this dystopi­an 1973 sci-fi, tourists vis­it a tri­umvi­rate of fan­ta­sy theme parks staffed by robot­ic his­tor­i­cal re-enac­tors: Roman World, Medieval World, and the tit­u­lar West World, with its “law­less vio­lence on the Amer­i­can Fron­tier.” When a virus infects the parks’ androids, James Brolin must fight a ruth­less robot gunslinger—played by a stone-faced Yul Brenner—to the death. The film may look laugh­ably dat­ed, but the fears it taps into are any­thing but: 2001, Ter­mi­na­tor, Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca, I, Robot, and even a West­world remake in the works—the peren­ni­al theme of man vs. machine, as old in film at least as Fritz Lang’s silent Metrop­o­lis, becomes ever more rel­e­vant in our drone-haunt­ed world.

But are evil—or at least dan­ger­ous­ly malfunctioning—robots some­thing we should legit­i­mate­ly fear? Not accord­ing to vision­ary sci-fi author and Dis­ney enthu­si­ast Ray Brad­bury in a let­ter to Eng­lish writer Bri­an Sib­ley, penned in 1974, one year after the release of theme-park hor­ror West­world. The main body of Bradbury’s let­ter con­sists of a vig­or­ous defense of Walt Dis­ney and Dis­ney­land, against whom “most of the oth­er archi­tects of the mod­ern world were ass­es and fools.” Sib­ley recalls that his ini­tial let­ter “expressed doubts about Disney’s use of Audio-Ani­ma­tron­ic cre­ations in Dis­ney­land.” “At the time,” he explains, “I… had prob­a­bly read too many sci-fi sto­ries about the dan­ger of robots tak­ing over our human world—including, of course, some by Ray—and so saw it as a sin­is­ter rather than benign exper­i­ment.”

After his praise of Dis­ney, Brad­bury writes two agi­tat­ed post­scripts explod­ing what Sib­ley calls “ill-informed and prej­u­diced views” on robots.  He class­es auto­mat­ed enti­ties with benign “exten­sions of peo­ple” like books, film pro­jec­tors, cars, and pre­sum­ably all oth­er forms of tech­nol­o­gy. Notwith­stand­ing the fact that books can­not actu­al­ly wield weapons and kill peo­ple, Brad­bury makes an inter­est­ing argu­ment about fears of robots as akin to those that lead to cen­sor­ship and enforced igno­rance. But Bradbury’s coun­ter­claim sounds a mis­an­throp­ic note that nonethe­less rings true giv­en the salient exam­ples he offers: “I am not afraid of robots,” he states, emphat­i­cal­ly, “I am afraid of peo­ple, peo­ple, peo­ple.” He goes on to list just a few of the con­flicts in which humans kill humans, reli­gious, racial, nation­al­ist, etc.: “Catholics killing Protes­tants… whites killing blacks… Eng­lish killing Irish.…” It’s a short sam­pling that could go on indef­i­nite­ly. Brad­bury strong­ly implies that the fears we project onto robot­ic bogey­men are in real­i­ty well-ground­ed fears of each oth­er. Peo­ple, he sug­gests, can be mon­strous when they don’t “remain human,” and technology—including robots—only assists with the nec­es­sary task of “human­iz­ing” us. “Robots?” Brad­bury writes, “God, I love them. And I will use them humane­ly to teach all of the above.” 

Read a tran­script of the let­ter below, cour­tesy of Let­ters of Note, and be sure to check out that site’s new book-length col­lec­tion of fas­ci­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal cor­re­spon­dence.

June 10, 1974

Dear Bri­an Sib­ley:

This will have to be short. Sor­ry. But I am deep into my screen­play on SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES and have no sec­re­tary, nev­er have had one..so must write all my own letters..200 a weekl!!!

Dis­ney was a dream­er and a doer..while the rest of us were talk­ing ab out the future, he built it. The things he taught us at Dis­ney­land about street plan­ning, crowd move­ment, com­fort, human­i­ty, etc, will influ­ence builders archi­tects, urban plan­ners for the next cen­tu­ry. Because of him we will human­ize our cities, plan small towns again where we can get in touch with one anoth­er again and make democ­ra­cy work cre­ative­ly because we will KNOW the peo­ple we vote for. He was so far ahead of his time it will take is the next 50 years to catch up. You MUST come to Dis­ney­land and eat your words, swal­low your doubts. Most of the oth­er archi­tects of the mod­ern world were ass­es and fools who talked against Big Broth­er and then built pris­ons to put us all up in..our mod­ern envi­ron­ments which sti­fle and destroy us. Dis­ney the so-called con­ser­v­a­tive turns out to be Dis­ney the great man of fore­sight and con­struc­tion.

Enough. Come here soon. I’ll toss you in the Jun­gle Ride Riv­er and ride you on the train into tomor­row, yes­ter­day, and beyond.

Good luck, and stop judg­ing at such a great dis­tance. You are sim­ply not qual­i­fied. Dis­ney was full of errors, para­dox­es, mis­takes. He was also full of life, beau­ty, insight. Which speaks for all of us, eh? We are all mys­ter­ies of light and dark. There are no true con­ser­v­a­tives, lib­er­als, etc, in the world. Only peo­ple.

Best,

(Signed, ‘Ray B.’)

P.S. I can’t find that issue of THE NATION, of the NEW REPUBLIC, which ever it was, with my let­ter in it on Dis­ney. Main­ly I said that if Dis­ney­land was good enough for Cap­tain Bligh it was good enough for me. Charles Laughton and his wife took me to Dis­ney­land for my very first vis­it and our first ride was the Jun­gle Boat Ride, which Laughton imme­di­ate­ly com­man­deered, jeer­ing at cus­tomers going by in oth­er boats! A fan­tas­tic romp for me and a hilar­i­ous day. What a way to start my asso­ci­a­tion with Dis­ney­land! R.B.

P.S. Can’t resist com­ment­ing on you fears of the Dis­ney robots. Why aren’t you afraid of books, then? The fact is, of course, that peo­ple have been afraid of books, down through his­to­ry. They are exten­sions of peo­ple, not peo­ple them­selves. Any machine, any robot, is the sum total of the ways we use it. Why not knock down all robot cam­era devices and the means for repro­duc­ing the stuff that goes into such devices, things called pro­jec­tors in the­atres? A motion pic­ture pro­jec­tor is a non-humanoid robot which repeats truths which we inject into it. Is it inhu­man? Yes. Does it project human truths to human­ize us more often than not? Yes.

The excuse could be made that we should burn all books because some books are dread­ful.

We should mash all cars because some cars get in acci­dents because of the peo­ple dri­ving them.

We should burn down all the the­atres in the world because some films are trash, dri­v­el.

So it is final­ly with the robots you say you fear. Why fear some­thing? Why not cre­ate with it? Why not build robot teach­ers to help out in schools where teach­ing cer­tain sub­jects is a bore for EVERYONE? Why not have Pla­to sit­ting in your Greek Class answer­ing jol­ly ques­tions about his Repub­lic? I would love to exper­i­ment with that. I am not afraid of robots. I am afraid of peo­ple, peo­ple, peo­ple. I want them to remain human. I can help keep them human with the wise and love­ly use of books, films, robots, and my own mind, hands, and heart.

I am afraid of Catholics killing Protes­tants and vice ver­sa.

I am afraid of whites killing blacks and vice ver­sa.

I am afraid of Eng­lish killing Irish and vice ver­sa.

I am afraid of young killing old and vice ver­sa.

I am afraid of Com­mu­nists killing Cap­i­tal­ists and vice ver­sa.

But…robots? God, I love them. I will use them humane­ly to teach all of the above. My voice will speak out of them, and it will be a damned nice voice.

Best, R.B.

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

The Secret of Life and Love, Accord­ing to Ray Brad­bury (1968)

Isaac Asi­mov Explains His Three Laws of Robots

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Take a Road Trip with Cyberspace Visionary William Gibson, Watch No Maps for These Territories (2000)

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | July 31st, 2014


“I prob­a­bly wor­ry less about the real future than the aver­age per­son,” says William Gib­son, the man who coined the term “cyber­space” and wrote books like Neu­ro­mancer, Idoru, and Pat­tern Recog­ni­tion. These have become clas­sics of a sci­ence-fic­tion sub­genre brand­ed as “cyber­punk,” a label that seems to pain Gib­son him­self. “A snap­py label and a man­i­festo would have been two of the very last things on my own career want list,” he says to David Wal­lace-Wells in a 2011 Paris Review inter­view. Yet the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the con­cept of cyberspace — and, to a great extent, its hav­ing become a real­i­ty — still aston­ish­es him. “I saw it go from the yel­low legal pad to the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, but cyber­space is every­where now, hav­ing evert­ed and col­o­nized the world. It starts to sound kind of ridicu­lous to speak of cyber­space as being some­where else.” A dozen years ear­li­er, in Mark Neale’s bio­graph­i­cal doc­u­men­tary No Maps for These Ter­ri­to­ries, the author tells of how he first con­ceived it as “an effec­tive buzz­word,” “evoca­tive and essen­tial­ly mean­ing­less,” and observes that, today, the pre­fix “cyber-” has very near­ly gone the way of “elec­tro-”: just as we’ve long since tak­en elec­tri­fi­ca­tion for grant­ed, so we now take con­nect­ed com­put­er­i­za­tion for grant­ed.

“Now,” of course, means the year 1999, when Neale shot the movie’s footage. He did it almost entire­ly in the back of a lim­ou­sine, tricked out for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and media pro­duc­tion, that car­ried Gib­son on a road trip across North Amer­i­ca. The long ride gives us an extend­ed look into Gib­son’s curi­ous, far-reach­ing mind as he explores issues of the inevitabil­i­ty with which we find our­selves “pen­e­trat­ed and co-opt­ed” by our tech­nol­o­gy; grow­ing up in a time when “the future with a cap­i­tal F was very much a going con­cern in North Amer­i­ca”; the loss of “the non-medi­at­ed world,” a coun­try to which we now “can­not find our way back”; the mod­ern real­i­ty’s com­bi­na­tion of “a per­va­sive sense of loss” and a Christ­mas morn­ing-like “excite­ment about what we could be gain­ing”; his ear­ly go-nowhere pas­tich­es of J.G. Bal­lard and how he then wrote Neu­ro­mancer as an approach to the “viable but essen­tial­ly derelict form” of sci­ence fic­tion; his fas­ci­na­tion with the sheer improb­a­bil­i­ty of those machines known as cities; and his mis­sion not to explain our moment, but to “make it acces­si­ble,” find­ing the vast, near-incom­pre­hen­si­ble struc­ture under­ly­ing the pound­ing waves of thought, trend, and tech­nol­o­gy through which we all move. Watch­ing No Maps for These Ter­ri­to­ries here in cyber­space, I kept for­get­ting that Gib­son said these things a tech-time eter­ni­ty ago, so per­ti­nent do they sound to this moment. And hap­pi­ness, as he puts it in one aside, “is being in the moment.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim­o­thy Leary Plans a Neu­ro­mancer Video Game, with Art by Kei­th Har­ing, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

William Gib­son, Father of Cyber­punk, Reads New Nov­el in Sec­ond Life

The Penul­ti­mate Truth About Philip K. Dick: Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Mys­te­ri­ous Uni­verse of PKD

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Read Online J.K. Rowling’s New Harry Potter Story: The First Glimpse of Harry as an Adult

in K-12, Literature, Sci Fi | July 8th, 2014

rowling new story

Quick note: Ear­li­er this year, J. K. Rowl­ing began writ­ing new sto­ries about the 2014 Quid­ditch World Cup Finals for Pot­ter­more, the web­site for all things Har­ry Pot­ter. Today, she fol­lowed up with a sto­ry that takes the form of an arti­cle pub­lished in The Dai­ly Prophet: “Dumbledore’s Army Reunites at Quid­ditch World Cup Final” by Rita Skeeter. Here, Rowl­ing gives us the first glimpse of the adult Har­ry Pot­ter.

About to turn 34, there are a cou­ple of threads of sil­ver in the famous Auror’s black hair, but he con­tin­ues to wear the dis­tinc­tive round glass­es that some might say are bet­ter suit­ed to a style-defi­cient twelve-year-old. The famous light­ning scar has com­pa­ny: Pot­ter is sport­ing a nasty cut over his right cheek­bone. Requests for infor­ma­tion as to its prove­nance mere­ly pro­duced the usu­al response from the Min­istry of Mag­ic: ‘We do not com­ment on the top secret work of the Auror depart­ment, as we have told you no less than 514 times, Ms. Skeeter.’ So what are they hid­ing? Is the Cho­sen One embroiled in fresh mys­ter­ies that will one day explode upon us all, plung­ing us into a new age of ter­ror and may­hem?

You can read the full sto­ry on Pot­ter­more, where reg­is­tra­tion is required. Or the com­plete sto­ry can also be read on Today.com (with­out reg­is­tra­tion).

via i09

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How J.K. Rowl­ing Plot­ted Har­ry Pot­ter with a Hand-Drawn Spread­sheet

Take Free Online Cours­es at Hog­warts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

The Quan­tum Physics of Har­ry Pot­ter, Bro­ken Down By a Physi­cist and a Magi­cian

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Ele­ments.

Har­ry Pot­ter Pre­quel Now Online

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X Minus One: Hear Classic Sci-Fi Radio Stories from Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury & Dick

in Radio, Sci Fi | June 19th, 2014

xminusone

Though I sel­dom long for my native cul­ture when abroad, when the need for a hit of Amer­i­cana does arise (and I say this cur­rent­ly writ­ing from Seoul, South Korea), I fill my iPod with old time radio. Many shows from Amer­i­ca’s “Gold­en Age” of wire­less broad­cast­ing can fill this need, but one could do much worse than Dimen­sion X, the ear­ly-1950s sci­ence-fic­tion pro­gram we fea­tured ear­li­er this month, or its late-1950s suc­ces­sor X Minus One, whose episodes you can also find at the Inter­net Archive. Both show­case Amer­i­can cul­ture at its mid-20th-cen­tu­ry finest: for­ward-look­ing, tem­pera­men­tal­ly bold, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly adept, and sat­u­rat­ed with earnest­ness but for the occa­sion­al sur­pris­ing­ly know­ing irony or bleak edge of dark­ness. That last comes cour­tesy of these shows’ writ­ing tal­ent, a group which includes such canon­i­cal names as Philip K. Dick, Ray Brad­bury, Isaac Asi­mov, and Robert Hein­lein.

X Minus One’s run, which last­ed from April 1955 to Jan­u­ary 1958, includ­ed a heap­ing help­ing of the evi­dent­ly high­ly radio-adapt­able Ray Brad­bury: his sto­ries “And The Moon Be Still As Bright,” “Mars is Heav­en,” “The Veldt,” “Dwellers in Silence,” “Zero Hour,” “To the Future,” and “Mar­i­onettes, Inc.,” all appeared as episodes. From Robert A. Hein­lein’s hard­er-bit­ten body of work the show pro­duced “Uni­verse,” “Requiem,” and “The Roads Must Roll.” Isaac Asi­mov, one of the most sci­en­tif­ic of that era’s sci­ence-fic­tion writ­ers, wrote the source mate­r­i­al for “Night­fall,” “C‑Chute,” and “Host­ess.” The pen of Philip K. Dick, sure­ly the most pure­ly imag­i­na­tive of the bunch, for its part pro­duced “The Defend­ers” and “Colony.” Amer­i­ca let fly all sorts of visions of the future back then, from the opti­mistic to the pes­simistic, the utopi­an to the dystopi­an, the pro­gres­sive to the regres­sive. The afore­men­tioned writ­ers did it best by mix­ing all those sen­si­bil­i­ties into each of their visions, which you can hear, along with those of many oth­ers, in X Minus One’s robust archive. You can stream sev­er­al of the episodes below.

“The Defend­ers” (Philip K. Dick)

“Night­fall” (Isaac Asi­mov)

“Zero Hour” (Ray Brad­bury)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio: The War of the Worlds That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

The Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series Fea­tures 24 Free Plays About Great Sci­en­tists and Sci­en­tif­ic Endeav­ors

Isaac Asimov’s Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sic, The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, Dra­ma­tized for Radio (1973)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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15-Year-Old George R.R. Martin Writes a Fan Letter to Stan Lee & Jack Kirby (1963)

in Letters, Sci Fi | June 19th, 2014

martin-LETTER

The let­ter above goes to show two things. George Ray­mond Richard Mar­tin, oth­er­wise known as George R.R. Mar­tin, or sim­ply as GRRM, had fan­ta­sy and writ­ing in his blood from a young age. Decades before he wrote his fan­ta­sy nov­el series A Song of Ice and Fire, which HBO adapt­ed into Game of Thrones, a 15-year-old George R. Mar­tin sent a fan let­ter to Stan Lee and Jack Kir­by, the leg­endary cre­ators of Spi­der-Man, the Hulk, Thor, the X‑Men and the Fan­tas­tic Four (called “F.F.” in the let­ter). When you read the note, you can imme­di­ate­ly tell that young Mar­tin was steeped in sci-fi and fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture. He could also string togeth­er some fair­ly com­plex sen­tences dur­ing his teenage years — sen­tences that many adults would strug­gle to write. But here’s the cool part for me. Wun­derkind Mar­tin lived in good old Bay­onne, NJ, the town where yours tru­ly has deep fam­i­ly roots. You can find the cov­er of the much-praised F.F. #17 below.

FF017cover

via Huff­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Lars von Trier’s Ani­mat­ed Movie Made When He Was 11 Years Old

See Carl Sagan’s Child­hood Sketch­es of The Future of Space Trav­el

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Dimension X: The 1950s SciFi Radio Show That Dramatized Stories by Asimov, Bradbury, Vonnegut & More

in Radio, Sci Fi | June 9th, 2014

dimension x

Enthu­si­asts of Amer­i­can radio dra­ma usu­al­ly place the for­m’s “Gold­en Age” as begin­ning in the 1920s and end­ing, almost at the stroke of tele­vi­sion’s mass adop­tion, in the 1950s. NBC’s Dimen­sion X, which ran in 1950 and 1951, came some­what late to the game, but it did more than its part to give “old time radio” a strong last decade — indeed, per­haps its strongest. Oth­er famous “seri­ous” sci­ence-fic­tion pro­grams had aired in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, but Dimen­sion X made its mark by adapt­ing short sto­ries by acknowl­edged mas­ters of the craft: Isaac Asi­mov, Ray Brad­bury, Robert Hein­lein, and even a non-genre-bound lit­er­ary mind like Kurt Von­negut. All of these world-cre­ators knew well the val­ue of imag­i­na­tion, and radio, in its way, stood then and remains today the most evoca­tive, imag­i­na­tion-dri­ven medi­um of them all. At the Inter­net Archive (cer­tain­ly a more con­ve­nient old time radio source than the boot­leg cas­sette tapes I used to have to buy) you can down­load all of Dimen­son X’s “adven­tures in time and space, tran­scribed in future tense.”

If you don’t know where in this spec­u­la­tive field of time and space to begin, we’ve high­light­ed a few Dimen­sion X episodes drawn from works of the most notable authors. June 10, 1950’s “The Green Hills of Earth”, based upon the Robert Hein­lein sto­ry of the same name, relates the life of “Noisy” Rhys­ling, a blind space-age trou­ba­dour who real­izes he must pay trib­ute to the plan­et he long ago left behind. The very next week’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”, one of Ray Brad­bury’s many works adapt­ed for the show, describes the apoc­a­lypse through the process­es of the self-main­tain­ing high-tech mir­a­cle house. June 17, 1951’s “Peb­ble in the Sky” takes its theme from the epony­mous Isaac Asi­mov nov­el that thrusts a 20th-cen­tu­ry every­man into a com­plex future of a galac­tic empire, a radioac­tive Earth, and manda­to­ry euthana­sia at age six­ty. And in Feb­ru­ary 11, 1950’s “Report on the Barn­house Effect”, only the show’s third broad­cast, we hear the tes­ti­mo­ny of a tele­ki­net­ic — one who, giv­en that Kurt Von­negut wrote the orig­i­nal sto­ry, it won’t sur­prise you to hear the gov­ern­ment imme­di­ate­ly (and hap­less­ly) tries to weaponize.

“The Green Hills of Earth” (Robert Hein­lein)

“There Will Come Soft Rains” (Ray Brad­bury)

“Peb­ble in the Sky” (Isaac Asi­mov)

“Report on the Barn­house Effect” (Kurt Von­negut)

Relat­ed con­tent:

Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio: The War of the Worlds That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

The Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series Fea­tures 24 Free Plays About Great Sci­en­tists and Sci­en­tif­ic Endeav­ors

Isaac Asimov’s Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sic, The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, Dra­ma­tized for Radio (1973)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Philip K. Dick’s Favorite Classical Music: A Free, 11-Hour Playlist

in Literature, Music, Sci Fi | May 20th, 2014

Image by Pete Welsch

What did Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? and A Scan­ner Dark­ly author Philip K. Dick, that vision­ary of our not-too-dis­tant dystopi­an future, lis­ten to while he craft­ed his descrip­tions of grim, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly (and some­times psy­che­del­i­cal­ly) har­row­ing times ahead? Mozart. Beethoven. Mahler. Wag­n­er.

Yes, while look­ing tex­tu­al­ly for­ward, he lis­tened back­ward, sound­track­ing the con­stant work­ings of his imag­i­na­tion with clas­si­cal music, as he had done since his teenage years. As Lejla Kucukalic writes in Philip K. Dick: Canon­i­cal Writer of the Dig­i­tal Age:

After grad­u­at­ing from high school in 1947, Dick moved out of his moth­er’s house and con­tin­ued work­ing as a clerk at a Berke­ley music store, Art Music. “Now,” wrote Dick, “my long­time love of music rose to the sur­face, and I began to study and grasp huge areas of the map of music; by four­teen I could rec­og­nize vir­tu­al­ly any sym­pho­ny or opera” (“Self-Por­trait” 13). Clas­si­cal music, from Beethoven to Wag­n­er, not only stayed Dick­’s life­long pas­sion, but also found its way into many of his works: Wag­n­er’s Goter­dammerung in A Maze of Death, Par­si­fal in Valis, and Mozart’s Mag­ic Flute in Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?

At his Forteana Blog, author Andrew May cred­its Dick with, giv­en his pop-cul­tur­al sta­tus, “a decid­ed­ly uncool knowl­edge of clas­si­cal music.” He cites not just Wag­n­er’s Der Ring des Nibelun­gen in the intro­duc­tion to A Maze of Death, Beethoven’s Mis­sa Solem­nis in Ubik, or the part of The Game-Play­ers of Titan where “a teenaged kid forks out 125 dol­lars for a vin­tage record­ing of a Puc­ci­ni aria,” but an entire ear­ly sto­ry which func­tions as “(in my opin­ion) a pure exer­cise in clas­si­cal music crit­i­cism.” In 1953’s “The Pre­serv­ing Machine,” as May retells it, an eccen­tric sci­en­tist, “wor­ried that West­ern civ­i­liza­tion is on the point of col­lapse, invents a machine to pre­serve musi­cal works for future gen­er­a­tions” by encod­ing it “in the form of liv­ing crea­tures. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as soon as the crea­tures are released into the envi­ron­ment, they start to adapt to it by evolv­ing into dif­fer­ent forms, and the music becomes dis­tort­ed beyond recog­ni­tion.”

Though no doubt an astute spec­u­la­tor, Dick seems not to have fore­seen the fact that our era suf­fers not from too few means of music stor­age but, per­haps, too many. None of his visions pre­sent­ed him with, for exam­ple, the tech­nol­o­gy of the Spo­ti­fy playlist, an exam­ple of which you’ll find at the bot­tom of this post. In it, we’ve assem­bled for your enjoy­ment some of Dick­’s favorite pieces of clas­si­cal music. The songs come scout­ed out by Gal­l­ey­cat’s Jason Boog, who links to them indi­vid­u­al­ly in his own post on Dick, clas­si­cal music, and May’s writ­ing on the inter­sec­tion of those two cul­tur­al forces. Lis­ten through it while read­ing some of Dick­’s own work — don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free PKD — and you’ll under­stand that he cared about not just the anx­i­eties of human­i­ty’s future or the great works of its past, but what remains essen­tial through­out the entire human expe­ri­ence. These com­posers will still appear on our playlists (or what­ev­er tech­nol­o­gy we’ll use) a hun­dred years from now, and if we still read any sci-fi author a hun­dred years from now, we’ll sure­ly read this one.

The 11 hour playlist (stream below or on the web here) includes Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, Beethoven’s Mis­sa Solem­nis and Fide­lio, Mozart’s The Mag­ic Flute, Wag­n­er’s Par­si­fal, and Mahler’s Sym­pho­ny No. 2 (Res­ur­rec­tion). If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy, grab the soft­ware here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

33 Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books & Free eBooks

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

The Penul­ti­mate Truth About Philip K. Dick: Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Mys­te­ri­ous Uni­verse of PKD

Philip K. Dick The­o­rizes The Matrix in 1977, Declares That We Live in “A Com­put­er-Pro­grammed Real­i­ty”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Howard Johnson’s Presents a Children’s Menu Featuring Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

in Film, Sci Fi | May 13th, 2014

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Rumor has it that promi­nent place­ment in a sci­ence-fic­tion movie can put a kind of “curse” on a brand: wit­ness the fates, for instance, of Atari, Bell, and Pan Amer­i­can World Air­ways, all of which went south after appear­ing in Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner in 1982. (Even the appar­ent­ly unstop­pable Coca-Cola, its logo flash­ing so bright­ly on the future Los Ange­les sky­line, sub­se­quent­ly put the infa­mous New Coke to mar­ket.) Pan Am, then less than a decade from dis­so­lu­tion, had pre­vi­ous­ly played a high-pro­file part in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Stan­ley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s vision of mono­liths, Jupiter mis­sions, and too-intel­li­gent arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence came out in 1968, the tail end of Amer­i­ca’s mid­cen­tu­ry Space Age of the imag­i­na­tion. At that time, Pan Am enjoyed a rep­u­ta­tion as the pre­ferred air­line of the new “jet-set” — the nat­ur­al trans­porta­tion provider, I sup­pose, for their seem­ing­ly inevitable (and inevitably glam­orous) hol­i­days in out­er space. But who would pro­vide the lodg­ing so far from Earth? Why, Howard John­son’s, of course.

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The hotel-restau­rant chain, Amer­i­ca’s largest in the 1960s and 70s, lent its name to the “earth­light room” built into 2001’s space sta­tion. It also offered a spe­cial chil­dren’s menu (pro­duced by the Amuse-a-Menu Com­pa­ny of Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts) fea­tur­ing a com­ic retelling not of the film itself, but of the expe­ri­ence of attend­ing the film’s pre­miere. Many of its pan­els man­age impres­sive recre­ations of 2001’s then-as-now-impres­sive visu­als, though I sus­pect the writer and artist had to work with few plot details — they make no men­tion at all, for instance, of the icon­i­cal­ly malev­o­lent super­com­put­er (and arguably 2001’s star) HAL 9000.

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The full menu, which you can browse at Dreams of Space, offers the kids of 1968 an activ­i­ty page, an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­chase a 50-cent birth­day-themed 45-RPM record, and a host of bland dish­es. Born well after 2001’s pre­miere — and indeed after Blade Run­ner’s, though I did hear when Pan Am went under — I nev­er­the­less remem­ber eat­ing all these stan­dards from chil­dren’s menus every­where: spaghet­ti, hot dogs, peanut-but­ter-and-jel­ly sand­wich­es. While I rarely dream of a future where we’ve devel­oped a space­far­ing jet set, I often dream of the even less plau­si­ble one where we’ve come up with appe­tiz­ing food for the under-ten set.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

1966 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

In 1968, Stan­ley Kubrick Makes Pre­dic­tions for 2001: Human­i­ty Will Con­quer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn Ger­man in 20 Min­utes

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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