Blade Runner: The Pillar of Sci-Fi Cinema that Siskel, Ebert, and Studio Execs Originally Hated

in Film, Sci Fi | March 22nd, 2013

blade-runner-executive-notes

Grow­ing up, I did­n’t think about all the indi­vid­ual qual­i­ties that make a great movie. I just thought of Blade Run­ner. What­ev­er Rid­ley Scot­t’s 1982 adap­ta­tion of Philip K. Dick­’s Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep had, it made for high cin­e­mat­ic qual­i­ty indeed. As naive as it sounds, it does­n’t fall much short of mod­ern crit­i­cal and tar­get-audi­ence con­sen­sus. Visu­al­ly, intel­lec­tu­al­ly, and tech­ni­cal­ly, Blade Run­ner has endured the decades almost effort­less­ly; how many oth­er tales of humans real and arti­fi­cial in a dystopi­an future mega­lopo­lis can you say the same about, at least with a straight face? Yet back in the ear­ly eight­ies, you would have had to call the pic­ture, which opened to a week­end of only $6.15 mil­lion in tick­et sales against its $28 mil­lion bud­get, a flop. Nor could crit­ics come up with much praise: “A waste of time,” said Gene Siskel of Siskel & Ebert. (“I have nev­er quite embraced Blade Run­ner,” Ebert wrote 25 years lat­er, “but now it is time to cave in and admit it to the canon.”)

Have a look at the sheet of screen­ing notes above (or click here to view a larg­er image), and you’ll find that even the stu­dio exec­u­tives did­n’t like the movie. Some Blade Run­ner fans blame the poor ini­tial recep­tion on the cut that 1982’s crit­ics and audi­ences saw, which dif­fers con­sid­er­ably from the ver­sion so many of us revere today. They cite in par­tic­u­lar a series of dead­en­ing­ly explana­to­ry voice-overs per­formed after the fact by star Har­ri­son Ford, which sounds like a clas­sic demand by philis­tine “suits” in charge until you read the notes from one exec­u­tive referred to as J.P.: “Voice over dry and monot­o­ne,” “This voice over is ter­ri­ble,” “Why is this voice over track so ter­ri­ble.” And under “gen­er­al com­ments”: “Voice over is an insult.” But with the offend­ing track­’s removal, the replace­ment of cer­tain shots, tweaks in the plot, and the sim­ple full­ness of time, Blade Run­ner has gone from one of the least respect­ed sci­ence fic­tion films to one of the most. Yet part of me won­ders if some of those high­er-ups in the screen­ing ever made peace with it. A cer­tain A.L., for instance, makes the four­teenth point, and adamant­ly: “They have to put more tits into the Zho­ra dress­ing room scene.”

via Neatora­ma

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Blade Run­ner

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book: The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead and Rid­ley Scott Online

Blade Run­ner: The Final, Final Cut of the Cult Clas­sic

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

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

in e-books, Literature, Sci Fi | March 11th, 2013

PKD

Image by Pete Wesch, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Although he died when he was only 53 years old, Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982) pub­lished 44 nov­els and 121 short sto­ries dur­ing his life­time and solid­i­fied his posi­tion as the most lit­er­ary of sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers. His nov­el Ubik appears on TIME magazine’s list of the 100 best Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­els, and Dick is the only sci­ence fic­tion writer to get hon­ored in the pres­ti­gious Library of Amer­i­ca series, a kind of pan­theon of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture.

If you’re not inti­mate­ly famil­iar with his nov­els, then you assured­ly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Run­ner, Total Recall, A Scan­ner Dark­ly and Minor­i­ty Report. Today, we bring you anoth­er way to get acquaint­ed with his writ­ing. We’re pre­sent­ing a selec­tion of Dick’s sto­ries avail­able for free on the web. Below we have culled togeth­er 33 short sto­ries from our two col­lec­tions, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices and 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. The sto­ries, it appears, are all in the pub­lic domain.

NOTE:  The recent update to this page was assist­ed by this help­ful resource at SFF Audio, which has researched the pub­lic domain sta­tus of many PKD sto­ries and amassed a handy list.

eTexts (find down­load instruc­tions here)

Audio

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries and New Year’s Wish­es

Ray Brad­bury Offers 12 Essen­tial Writ­ing Tips and Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture Saves Civ­i­liza­tion

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Watch The Twilight Zone’s Pilot Episode, Pitched by Rod Serling Himself (1959)

in Sci Fi, Television | March 4th, 2013

?si=HLkGT0R6EOmzwCen

Sure, cre­ators of tele­vi­sion’s dis­pos­able sit­coms and game shows have to sell their wares, and stren­u­ous­ly, to net­work exec­u­tives. But The Twi­light Zone? How could such an inno­v­a­tive, influ­en­tial tele­vi­su­al insti­tu­tion have ever need­ed to push its way past gate­keep­ers? Yet watch the series’ 1959 pilot above, and, before that even starts, you’ll see cre­ator Rod Ser­ling him­self make his pitch: “You gen­tle­men, of course, know how to push a prod­uct. My pres­ence here is for much the same pur­pose: sim­ply to push a prod­uct. To acquaint you with an enter­tain­ment prod­uct which we hope, and which we rather expect, would make your prod­uct-push­ing that much eas­i­er. What you’re about to see, gen­tle­men, is a series called The Twi­light Zone. We think it’s a rather spe­cial kind of series.” And how.

As the quin­tes­sen­tial late-night, black-and-white plunge into the spec­u­la­tive, the bizarre, the moral­is­tic, and the sim­ply eerie, The Twi­light Zone con­tin­ues to cap­ti­vate viewers—nowadays often, no doubt, YouTube viewers—born gen­er­a­tions after the end of its run. The pilot episode, “Where is Every­body?” sets the tone by fol­low­ing a lone, bewil­dered man through a mys­te­ri­ous­ly emp­ty town, seem­ing­ly aban­doned moments ago. But before that rolls, Ser­ling tan­ta­lizes the boss­es with descrip­tions of oth­er tales then in pro­duc­tion: a man stuck on an aster­oid with a robot, an immor­tal sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment, and a mil­que­toast mis­tak­en for the fastest gun in the old west. Not for noth­ing did Ser­ling build a rep­u­ta­tion as an auteur of human lone­li­ness. But that would come lat­er. “Mr. Ser­ling should not have much trou­ble in mak­ing his mark,” wrote the New York Times’ crit­ic when the show first aired. “At least his series promis­es to be dif­fer­ent.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rod Ser­ling: Where Do Ideas Come From?

When Roald Dahl Host­ed His Own Creepy TV Show Way Out, a Com­pan­ion to Rod Serling’s Twi­light Zone (1961)

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

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William Shatner Puts in a Long Distance Call to Astronaut Aboard the International Space Station

in Sci Fi, Science | February 7th, 2013

If his goal is to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, William Shat­ner hasn’t always been his own best friend. His cov­ers of pop hits launched a whole mini-genre of unin­ten­tion­al­ly bad celebri­ty record­ings.

To his cred­it, he made fun of him­self to great effect on Boston Legal but fol­lowed that series up with a Broad­way show It’s Shatner’s World, We Just Live In It, to mixed reviews.

But the man nev­er quits. Ear­li­er this month the Cana­di­an Space Agency orga­nized a Tweet­up with Cana­di­an astro­naut Chris Had­field, who is aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion orbit­ing the Earth. One space lover who par­tic­i­pat­ed was Shat­ner, who tweet­ed:

@Cmdr_Hadfield: “Are you tweet­ing from space? MBB”

A few hours lat­er Had­field, respond­ed: “Yes, Stan­dard Orbit, Cap­tain. And we’re detect­ing signs of life on the sur­face.”

Shat­ner and Had­field planned a longer con­ver­sa­tion and it was hard to say who was more thrilled by the event: Trekkies the world over, Shat­ner, or Had­field.

For about fif­teen min­utes today, with Hous­ton Mis­sion Con­trol act­ing as galac­tic switch­board oper­a­tor, the two chat­ted about the space pro­gram, the risks of liv­ing in space, and even some exis­ten­tial mat­ters.

Right off the bat, Shat­ner asked Had­field whether the fact that he had used a Russ­ian vehi­cle to get up to the space sta­tion means that Amer­i­ca is “falling behind” in its space pro­gram. The answer—long and upbeat—was, in a word, no.

Then Shat­ner asked Had­field why he’d vol­un­teered for the as-yet unsched­uled mis­sion to Mars.

“Isn’t that a fear­ful endeav­or, fraught with enor­mous dif­fi­cul­ty and dan­ger?”

“Well you’ve tak­en a lot of risks in your life as well,” Had­field replied.

He lat­er went on to say that pro­grams like Star Trek inspired him to study to become an astro­naut.

“Going to Mars is inevitable,” Had­field said, speak­ing into a float­ing, hand-held micro­phone, “just as sail­ing across the Atlantic or going to the moon. We take those visu­al­ized fan­tasies and turn them into real­i­ties.”

The view of Earth from his win­dow on the Space Sta­tion, he added, is just like the view that Sulu and Chekhov had from the Star­ship Enter­prise.

“It’s an enor­mous won­der­ful rolling Earth but all you have to do is flip your­self upside-down and the rest of the uni­verse is under you.”

By the end of their chat, Had­field had invit­ed Shat­ner to vis­it him at his cab­in and watch the satel­lites fly through the sky.

“You know those scenes in Boston Legal at the end of an episode when you were on the veran­da drink­ing a whiskey and smok­ing a cig­ar, you ought to vis­it me in North­ern Ontario. It’s a great place to talk about life.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Nichelle Nichols Tells Neil deGrasse Tyson How Mar­tin Luther King Con­vinced Her to Stay on Star Trek

Leonard Nimoy Nar­rates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voy­age to the Ori­gins of the Solar Sys­tem

William Shat­ner Nar­rates Space Shut­tle Doc­u­men­tary

Star Trek Celebri­ties, William Shat­ner and Wil Wheaton, Nar­rate Mars Land­ing Videos for NASA

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her at .

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The Centrifuge Brain Project: Scientists Solve Mankind’s Great Problems by Spinning People

in Comedy, Sci Fi | February 7th, 2013

What if the very thing that made you feel crazy hap­py also made you smarter? That’s the ques­tion under­ly­ing the work of the Insti­tute for Cen­trifu­gal Research, where sci­en­tists believe that spin­ning peo­ple around at a suf­fi­cient­ly high G‑force will solve “even the trick­i­est chal­lenges con­fronting mankind.”

We fol­low Dr. Nick Laslow­icz, chief engi­neer, as he strolls through amuse­ment parks, wear­ing a hard hat and tak­ing notes, and describes the lib­er­at­ing pow­er of spin­ning and the “mis­take” of grav­i­ty.

The actor is ter­rif­ic. Yes, The Cen­trifuge Brain Project is a joke. Laslow­icz is just zany enough to be believ­able as a sci­en­tist whose research began in the 1970s. The sketch­es on the project’s web­site are fun too and direc­tor Till Nowak’s CGR ren­der­ing of the ride con­cepts are hilar­i­ous.

centrifuge_plan_steam_pressure_catapult

The cul­mi­nat­ing exper­i­ment fea­tures a ride that resem­bles a giant trop­i­cal plant. Rid­ers enter a round car that ris­es slow­ly up, up, up and then takes off sud­den­ly at incred­i­bly high speed along one of the “branch­es.”

“Unpre­dictabil­i­ty is a key part of our work,” says Laslow­icz. After the ride, he says, peo­ple described expe­ri­enc­ing a “read­just­ment of key goals and life aspi­ra­tions.” Though he lat­er adds that he wouldn’t put his own chil­dren on one of his rides.

“These machines pro­vide total free­dom,” Laslow­icz says, “cut­ting all con­nec­tion to the world we live in: com­mu­ni­ca­tion respon­si­bil­i­ty, weight. Every­thing is on hold when you’re being cen­trifuged.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mir­a­cle Mush­rooms Pow­er the Slums of Mum­bai

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her work at .

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Nichelle Nichols Explains How Martin Luther King Convinced Her to Stay on Star Trek

in History, Sci Fi, Television | January 21st, 2013

nichelle-nichols-king

Nichelle Nichols played Lt. Uhu­ra on the orig­i­nal Star Trek series (1966–1969). Dur­ing the days when African-Amer­i­cans were still fight­ing for legal equal­i­ty in Amer­i­ca, her role took on spe­cial impor­tance. Her inclu­sion on the Enter­prise point­ed to a future when Amer­i­cans could live and work togeth­er, putting race aside. And Nichols made his­to­ry when Lt. Uhu­ra and Cap­tain Kirk embraced in the first inter-racial kiss on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion.

We can part­ly thank Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. for all of this. As Nichols explains below, she gave con­sid­ered leav­ing Star Trek at the end of Sea­son 1, hop­ing to pur­sue a broad­way career. But MLK asked her to recon­sid­er. A big fan of the show, Dr. King under­scored the impor­tance of her char­ac­ter, of what it meant to future African-Amer­i­cans, of how her char­ac­ter, through the pow­er of TV, was open­ing a door that could nev­er be closed. Need­less to say, he per­suad­ed her to stay on the show, and the rest is glo­ri­ous his­to­ry.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson Deliv­ers the Great­est Sci­ence Ser­mon Ever

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

in Economics, Sci Fi | December 7th, 2012

Tire­less New York Times colum­nist and Nobel-prize win­ning Prince­ton econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man has long played the role of Cas­san­dra, warn­ing of dis­as­ters while the archi­tects of pol­i­cy look on, shake their heads, and ignore him. I’ve some­times won­dered how he stands it. Well, it turns out that, like many peo­ple, Krugman’s long view is informed by epic nar­ra­tive. Only in his case, it’s nei­ther ancient scrip­ture nor Ayn Rand. It’s the Isaac Asi­mov-penned Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, which Krug­man, in a recent Guardian piece, dis­sects in detail as a series that informed his views as a teenag­er, and has stayed with him for four and a half decades.

The hero of the tril­o­gy, Hari Sel­don, is a math­e­mati­cian, whose par­tic­u­lar branch of math­e­mat­ics, called psy­chohis­to­ry, allows him to make mas­sive, large-scale pre­dic­tions of the future. This sci­ence informs “The Sel­don Plan” that silent­ly guides the com­ing of a new Galac­tic Empire thou­sands of years into the future. If it sounds a bit arid in para­phrase, it isn’t, even though Asimov’s char­ac­ters tend to be thin and his descrip­tions lack in poet­ry. “Tol­stoy this isn’t,” Krug­man tells us.

But the nov­els work as bril­liant spec­u­la­tive fic­tion, teth­ered to the famil­iar his­to­ry of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion by res­o­nances with ancient Rome, mer­can­tile Europe, and old New York. Instead of space opera or fan­ta­sy, Krug­man describes Asimov’s fic­tion as anti-action, anti-prophe­cy. The protagonist’s “pre­science comes from his math­e­mat­ics.” And this, believe it or not, is fas­ci­nat­ing, at least for Krug­man. Because for him they func­tion as reminders that “it’s pos­si­ble to have social sci­ence with the pow­er to pre­dict events and, maybe, to lead to a bet­ter future.” Krug­man writes:

They remain, unique­ly, a thrilling tale about how self-knowl­edge – an under­stand­ing of how our own soci­ety works – can change his­to­ry for the bet­ter. And they’re every bit as inspi­ra­tional now as they were when I first read them, three-quar­ters of my life ago.

He admits that the sen­ti­ments of Asimov’s fic­tion present us with a “very bour­geois ver­sion of prophe­cy,” but then, eco­nom­ics is a very bour­geois sci­ence, most­ly con­cerned with one emo­tion, “greed.” Nonethe­less, Krug­man believes in the pow­er of “good eco­nom­ics to make cor­rect pre­dic­tions that are very much at odds with pop­u­lar prej­u­dices.” And we could all do with few­er of those.

Asimov’s Hugo-win­ning tril­o­gy was adapt­ed for eight, one-hour radio-dra­ma episodes in 1973. Lis­ten to the first install­ment above, and down­load or stream the remain­ing episodes at the links below:

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3| Part 6 |MP3| Part 7 |MP3| Part 8 |MP3|

Or lis­ten to the Spo­ti­fy ver­sion up top.

You can find this audio list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Isaac Asimov Explains His Three Laws of Robots

in Books, Sci Fi | October 31st, 2012

A hand­ful of futur­ists, philoso­phers, and technophiles believe we are approach­ing what they call the “sin­gu­lar­i­ty”: a point in time when smart machines became much smarter, stronger, and faster than their cre­ators, and then become self-con­scious. If there’s any chance of this occur­ring, it’s worth­while to pon­der the con­se­quences. But we do already, all the time—in exis­ten­tial­ly bleak sce­nar­ios like Blade Run­ner, the Ter­mi­na­tor series, the reboot­ed Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca (and its failed pre­quel Capri­ca).

The prospects are nev­er pleas­ant. Robot­ic engi­neers in these worlds hard­ly seem to both­er teach­ing their machines the kind of moral code that would keep them from turn­ing and destroy­ing us (that is, when they aren’t explic­it­ly designed to do so).

I won­der about this con­cep­tu­al gap—convenient as it may be in nar­ra­tive terms—given that Isaac Asi­mov, one of the fore­fa­thers of robot fic­tion invent­ed just such a moral code. In the video above, he out­lines it (with his odd pro­nun­ci­a­tion of “robot”). The code con­sists of three laws; in his fic­tion these are hard­wired into each robot’s “positron­ic brain,” a fic­tion­al com­put­er that gives robots some­thing of a human-like con­scious­ness.

First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inac­tion, allow a human being to come to harm.
Sec­ond Law: A robot must obey the orders giv­en it by human beings except where such orders would con­flict with the First Law.
Third Law: A robot must pro­tect its own exis­tence as long as such pro­tec­tion does not con­flict with the First or Sec­ond Law.

Isaac Asi­mov devot­ed a good deal of his writ­ing career to the sub­ject of robots, so it’s safe to say, he’d done quite bit of think­ing about how they would fit into the worlds he invent­ed. In doing so, Asi­mov had to solve the prob­lem of how robots would inter­act with humans once they had some degree of free will. But are his three laws suf­fi­cient? Many of Asimov’s sto­ries–I, Robot, for example–turn on some fail­ure or con­fu­sion between them. And even for their chase scenes, explo­sions, and melo­dra­ma, the three screen explo­rations of arti­fi­cial life men­tioned above thought­ful­ly exploit philo­soph­i­cal ambi­gu­i­ties and insuf­fi­cien­cies in Asimov’s sim­ple sys­tem.

For one thing, while Asimov’s robots were hunks of met­al, tak­ing only vague­ly humanoid form, the robots of our cur­rent imag­in­ings emerge from an uncan­ny val­ley with real­is­tic skin and hair or even a genet­ic code and cir­cu­la­to­ry sys­tem. They are pos­si­ble sex­u­al part­ners, friends and lovers, co-work­ers and supe­ri­ors. They can deceive us as to their nature (a fourth law by Bul­gar­i­an nov­el­ist Lyuben Dilov states that a robot “must estab­lish its iden­ti­ty as a robot in all cas­es”); they can con­ceive chil­dren or desires their cre­ators nev­er intend­ed. These dif­fer­ences beg impor­tant ques­tions: how eth­i­cal are these laws? How fea­si­ble? When the sin­gu­lar­i­ty occurs, will Skynet become aware of itself and destroy us?

Unlike Asi­mov, we now live in a time where the ques­tions have direct applic­a­bil­i­ty to robots liv­ing among us, out­side the pages of sci-fi. As Japan­ese and South Kore­an roboti­cists have found, the three laws can­not address what they call “open tex­ture risk”— unpre­dictable inter­ac­tions in unstruc­tured envi­ron­ments. Humans rely on nuanced and often pre­con­scious read­ings of com­plex social codes and the fine shades of mean­ing embed­ded in nat­ur­al lan­guage; machines have no such sub­tle­ty… yet. Whether or not they can devel­op it is an open ques­tion, mak­ing humanoid robots with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence an “open tex­ture risk.” But as you can see from the video below, we’re per­haps much clos­er to Blade Run­ner or AI than to the clunky, inter­stel­lar min­ing machines in Asi­mov’s fic­tion.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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