Hear Ursula K. Le Guin’s Space Rock Opera Rigel 9: A Rare Recording from 1985

in Literature, Music, Sci Fi | January 26th, 2018

In her remem­brance of recent­ly depart­ed sci-fi great Ursu­la K. Le Guin, Mar­garet Atwood describes “an absurd vision” she drew from Le Guin’s fan­ta­sy nov­el A Wiz­ard of Earth­sea: “There was Ursu­la, mov­ing calm­ly down a hill of whis­per­ing sand under the unchang­ing stars; and there was me, dis­traught and run­ning after her and call­ing ‘No! Come Back! We need you here and now!’” Atwood longs for Le Guin’s respons­es to the crises of the present, the old hier­ar­chies of pow­er and priv­i­lege reassert­ing their cru­el dom­i­nance over men, women, chil­dren, and an already over­bur­dened envi­ron­ment.

The prob­lem of pow­er and its abus­es is one Le Guin returned to over and over in her work. “As an anar­chist,” writes Atwood,” she would have want­ed a self-gov­ern­ing soci­ety, with gen­der and racial equal­i­ty.” As a keen anthro­po­log­i­cal observ­er of human behav­ior, she saw how and why tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-advanced, yet psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly reac­tionary soci­eties stray from these ideals, desta­bi­liz­ing the eco­log­i­cal bal­ance they depend on to sur­vive and thrive. Le Guin fought back in her way. She was a pro­lif­ic builder of poet­ic new worlds. Through them, we will always have her wis­dom, and in a few rare instances, we have her music.

No, Le Guin didn’t com­pose, but she did write libret­tos for three dif­fer­ent col­lab­o­ra­tive projects. Above, we have her “most note­wor­thy melod­ic under­tak­ing,” accord­ing to Locus magazine’s Jeff Berk­wits, Rigel 9, a space opera with music by avant-garde com­pos­er David Bed­ford, record­ed and released in 1985. (It’s also stream­able on Spo­ti­fy. Lis­ten below or here.) Rigel 9 “tells a pret­ty clas­sic space sto­ry,” Cara Giaimo  writes at Atlas Obscu­ra. “Three astro­nauts, named Anders, Kap­per, and Lee, are sent to explore a strange world. After Anders goes off to col­lect plant sam­ples and is kid­napped by extrater­res­tri­als, Kap­per and Lee argue over whether to res­cue him or save them­selves.”

Amidst this dra­ma of tiny red aliens, a dou­ble sun, air that smells of cin­na­mon and yel­low and orange trees, we learn a few unset­tling facts about what has hap­pened back on Earth. “The Earth has no more forests,” sings Anders, “no wilder­ness, no still places.” Evok­ing a Sartre­an hor­ror on a plan­e­tary scale, he gives us an image of “only human faces, only human voic­es…. The Earth has no more silence.” The resources we need to replen­ish not only air and water, but also weary minds have dis­ap­peared. These rev­e­la­tions set up Anders’ seduc­tion by the lush­ness and qui­et of Rigel 9, and the gor­geous sopra­no voic­es of its inhab­i­tants.

Bedford’s music is trans­port­ing, with “Bowie-esque synth sweeps” and sax­o­phones, thrilling choral move­ments, and a pound­ing rhythm sec­tion that puts one in mind of Queen. Scot­tish New Wave duo Straw­ber­ry Switch­blade make an appear­ance, as the lead voic­es of an alien funer­al pro­ces­sion (top). The dia­logue and spo­ken per­for­mances can be a bit corny, but the space rock opera has nev­er been suit­ed for sub­tle­ty, and Le Guin and Bed­ford pur­pose­ful­ly cre­at­ed the dra­ma as a radio play of sorts. “We had talked about the com­po­si­tion as ‘opera for ear,” she explained, “That is, a ‘radio opera… We liked the idea of being able to imag­ine the scenery, and then putting that scenery into the words and the music.”

That same year, Le Guin released anoth­er musi­cal effort, team­ing with musi­cian Todd Bar­ton for a cas­sette-only pro­duc­tion called Music and Poet­ry of Kesh, released togeth­er with her nov­el Always Com­ing Home. And ten years lat­er, she worked with clas­si­cal com­pos­er Eli­nor Armer on Uses of Music in Utter­most Parts. This eight-move­ment work fea­tures Le Guin her­self, nar­rat­ing a text about “a fan­tas­ti­cal realm,” Berk­wits writes, “the Utter­most Arch­i­pel­ago in the fifth quar­ter of Island Earth—where sound lit­er­al­ly sus­tains life.” Just above, hear one move­ment, “The Sea­sons of Oling,” a fur­ther reminder that Le Guin, who nev­er shrank from the vio­lence of our world, could always imag­ine enthralling alter­na­tives.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cel­e­brate the Life & Writ­ing of Ursu­la K. Le Guin (R.I.P.) with Clas­sic Radio Drama­ti­za­tions of Her Sto­ries

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

Ursu­la K. Le Guin Names the Books She Likes and Wants You to Read

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

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Celebrate the Life & Writing of Ursula K. Le Guin (R.I.P.) with Classic Radio Dramatizations of Her Stories

in Literature, Sci Fi | January 24th, 2018

Until yes­ter­day, had you asked me to name my favorite liv­ing writ­ers, Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s name would appear near the top of the list. As of yes­ter­day, I can no longer say this. Le Guin passed away at the age of 88, and left mil­lions of fans bereft—fans with whom she had shared some of the finest sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy writ­ten in the 20th cen­tu­ry, and with whom she hap­pi­ly shared her wis­dom and advice in the free online work­shops she held in her lat­er years, her way of con­nect­ing with read­ers when she retired from writ­ing.

Like many peo­ple, I first came to Le Guin’s work through her 1969 Neb­u­la and Hugo-win­ning nov­el The Left Hand of Dark­ness, a book that explod­ed ideas about what sci­ence fic­tion could be and do. That nov­el is part of a series of sto­ries called the “Hain­ish cycle,” which—like C.S. Lewis’ Space Tril­o­gy—are deeply philo­soph­i­cal and deeply sen­si­tive to the emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal res­o­nances of the ques­tions they grap­ple with.

But unlike Lewis, Le Guin sought not to res­ur­rect old mytholo­gies, but to show how the bound­aries and divi­sions we take for grant­ed might eas­i­ly become arbi­trary and unfa­mil­iar; how we might become some­thing entire­ly new and dif­fer­ent.

There are many oth­er writ­ers who come to mind when I think of Le Guin—Octavia But­ler, Frank Her­bert, Iain Banks, and, of course, Tolkien. Like many of the best writ­ers in her gen­res, Le Guin’s fic­tion is con­tem­pla­tive as well as spectacular—she could write space opera, sword and sor­cery, and adven­ture sto­ries just as well as any of her con­tem­po­raries, but her sus­tained focus on the nuanced inter­re­la­tions of char­ac­ter and theme—on the agony of choice, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of free­dom and con­nec­tion with­out coer­cion, the social and eco­log­i­cal con­se­quences of blind acqui­si­tion and thought­less action—gave her work a depth many of her con­tem­po­raries lacked.

Le Guin’s anar­chist envi­ron­men­tal­ism and “tough-mind­ed fem­i­nist sen­si­bil­i­ty” opened up paths for dozens of writ­ers who came after her and who also did not fit the typ­i­cal molds estab­lished by the pulpy mag­a­zine sto­ries of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. She was a schol­ar, earn­ing an M.A. in French and Ital­ian lit­er­a­ture and doing doc­tor­al work in France on a Ful­bright in the mid-fifties. But unlike cer­tain, more inse­cure, writ­ers, Le Guin did not wear her learn­ing on her sleeve. She wove it into the tex­ture of her nar­ra­tives and the allu­sive lyri­cism of her prose.

Le Guin’s high­ly dis­tinc­tive qualities—her poet­ry and inquiry, tough­ness and sensitivity—are evi­dent in even minor, less­er-known sto­ries. Today, to cel­e­brate her life, we bring you a few of those sto­ries, as adapt­ed into radio dra­mas by the 70s pro­gram Mind Webs and the late 80s NPR show­case Sci-Fi Radio. At the top of the post, hear “Diary of a Rose,” below, “Field of Vision,” and, above, “The End.”

And, just above, hear part one of a CBC drama­ti­za­tion of Le Guin’s nov­el The Dis­pos­sessed, the fifth nov­el in the Hain­ish cycle, though chrono­log­i­cal­ly the cycle’s begin­ning. (Hear all six parts of the dra­ma­tized nov­el here.) Sub­ti­tled “an Ambigu­ous Utopia,” the nov­el, writes DePauw University’s Judah Bier­man, is “a prize­wor­thy con­tri­bu­tion to the debate about the respon­si­bil­i­ty of knowl­edge, of the vision­ary and of the sci­en­tist, in a planned soci­ety.” But like all of Le Guin’s fic­tion, it is so much more than that, a work that bears repeat­ed read­ing, and lis­ten­ing, and that nev­er exhausts its pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Note: If you’re inter­est­ed in get­ting pro­fes­sion­al­ly read ver­sions of Le Guin’s nov­els, con­sid­er sign­ing up for a 30-day free tri­al to Audible.com. When you sign up for a free tri­al, they let you down­load two audio­books for free, and keep the books, regard­less of whether you become a long-term sub­scriber or not. Get details here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Hear Inven­tive Sto­ries from Ursu­la LeGuin & J.G. Bal­lard Turned Into CBC Radio Dra­mas

Sci-Fi Radio: Hear Radio Dra­mas of Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Ray Brad­bury, Philip K. Dick, Ursu­la K. LeGuin & More (1989)

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

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

Lis­ten to 188 Dra­ma­tized Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries by Ursu­la K. Le Guin, Isaac Asi­mov, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Bal­lard & More

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

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A Teaser Trailer for Fahrenheit 451: A New Film Adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Ever-Relevant Novel

in Film, Sci Fi | January 15th, 2018

From HBO comes a teas­er trail­er for an upcom­ing adap­ta­tion of Ray Brad­bury’s Fahren­heit 451, a film that went into pro­duc­tion a year before the 2016 election–that is, before things in Amer­i­ca took a turn for the worse and the weird. That life has start­ed to imi­tate Brad­bury’s art has­n’t been lost on the film’s direc­tor, Ramin Bahrani, who told crit­ics at the Tele­vi­sion Crit­ics Asso­ci­a­tion:

Polit­i­cal­ly things are going in a very strange direc­tion in terms of what is real and what is not real… I think we’ve been going in that direc­tion for a long time, it’s just now kind of being revealed to us more clear­ly. So I think from a high lev­el, that’s a prob­lem.…

I don’t want to focus so much on [Trump] because I don’t want to excuse the 30, 40 years pri­or to that. He’s just an exag­ger­a­tion of it now…

I don’t want us to for­get what Brad­bury said, that we asked for this… We are [also] elect­ing again this thing [a smart­phone] in my pock­et . We are elect­ing to give it all away to this.

Between the tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments in last 20 years and pol­i­tics, I think Bradbury’s biggest con­cern about the ero­sion of cul­ture is now… and the speed at which this is advanc­ing is expo­nen­tial.

Will we actu­al­ly get ahead of the dam, or will it just be a flood and up to some oth­er gen­er­a­tion to bring back all of Bradbury’s heroes?

The new film star­ring Michael B. Jor­dan, and Michael Shan­non will come out this spring. Stay tuned.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

To Read This Exper­i­men­tal Edi­tion of Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451, You’ll Need to Add Heat to the Pages

Ray Brad­bury Reveals the True Mean­ing of Fahren­heit 451: It’s Not About Cen­sor­ship, But Peo­ple “Being Turned Into Morons by TV”

Father Writes a Great Let­ter About Cen­sor­ship When Son Brings Home Per­mis­sion Slip to Read Ray Bradbury’s Cen­sored Book, Fahren­heit 451

Who Was Afraid of Ray Brad­bury & Sci­ence Fic­tion? The FBI, It Turns Out (1959)

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Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, the New Series Starring Bryan Cranston, Anna Paquin & Steve Buscemi, Now Streaming Free on Amazon Prime

in Sci Fi, Television | January 15th, 2018

Do I like Philip K. Dick? Do androids dream of elec­tric sheep? Hon­est­ly, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to answer such ques­tions about the sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of arti­fi­cial beings. But I know for cer­tain that I like Philip K. Dick. Deeply admire, respect, fear, even… there are many words I could use to describe the way I feel about his imag­i­na­tion and vision. And I could say much the same about the film adap­ta­tions of Dick’s work, up to and includ­ing Blade Run­ner 2049, which wasn’t as visu­al­ly over­whelm­ing on the small screen after its release on stream­ing video but still as emo­tion­al­ly cap­ti­vat­ing in its nar­ra­tive, pac­ing, score, and direc­tor Denis Villeneuve’s fideli­ty to, and expan­sion of, the orig­i­nal film’s use of col­or and mon­u­men­tal, future-bru­tal­ist archi­tec­ture to tell a sto­ry.

Though he very much want­ed to break out of sci­ence fic­tion and achieve the sta­tus of a “lit­er­ary” writer—the dis­tinc­tions in his day being much hard­er and faster—Dick’s fic­tion has pro­vid­ed the ulti­mate source for the cin­e­mat­ic sci-fi epic for sev­er­al decades now, and shows lit­tle sign of falling out of favor. The com­mer­cial and cre­ative ques­tion seems to be not whether Dick’s sto­ries still res­onate, but whether they trans­late to tele­vi­sion as bril­liant­ly as they do to film. Crit­i­cal opin­ion can sharply divide on Amazon’s adap­ta­tion of Dick’s alter­na­tive his­to­ry nov­el The Man in the High Cas­tle (about a world in which the Axis pow­ers tri­umphed), which might be “pon­der­ous,” “bor­ing,” and—in its sec­ond season—“the worst TV show of the year,” or “the sec­ond best show Ama­zon has ever made.”

How much this lat­ter judg­ment con­veys depends upon how high­ly, on the whole, one rates the qual­i­ty of pro­gram­ming from that cor­po­rate mega-jug­ger­naut threat­en­ing to over­take near­ly every aspect of con­sumer cul­ture. To say that I find it iron­ic that such an enti­ty pos­sess­es not only one Philip K. Dick prop­er­ty, but now two, with its lat­est Dick-inspired anthol­o­gy show Philip K. Dick­’s Elec­tric Dreams, would be to gross­ly under­state the case. The author who imag­ined an intru­sive inter­net of things and a dystopi­an world where adver­tise­ments appear in our minds might also find this sit­u­a­tion some­what… Dick-ian (Dick-like? Dick-ish?). But such is the world we live in. Putting these ironies aside, let’s revis­it the ques­tion: do Dick­’s sto­ries work as well on TV as they do on film?

Find out for your­self. The first sea­son of Philip K. Dick­’s Elec­tric Dreams is now stream­ing on Ama­zon (see the trail­er above), and you can either pur­chase it by episode, or binge-stream the whole thing gratis with a 30-day free tri­al of Ama­zon Prime. Giv­en that the series, which adapts sto­ries from a col­lec­tion of the same title, is not the prod­uct of one sin­gu­lar vision but a dif­fer­ent cre­ative team each time, you may agree with Evan Nar­cisse at Giz­mo­do, who writes that the episodes “don’t just vary in aes­thet­ics; they vary wide­ly in qual­i­ty.” It has a star-stud­ded cast—including Anna Paquin, Janelle Mon­ae, Ter­rance Howard, Steve Busce­mi, and Bryan Cranston (who co-produced)—and some impres­sive pro­duc­tion val­ues.

But Elec­tric Dreams also has a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge set before it: “to show both new view­ers and con­ver­sant fans why Dick’s oeu­vre mat­ters, which is hard in a world where we’re eeri­ly close to some of his fic­tion­al real­i­ties.” Indeed—as we pon­der whether we might be char­ac­ters in a sim­u­lat­ed real­i­ty, our thoughts and beliefs manip­u­lat­ed by pow­er­ful com­pa­nies like those in Dick’s unset­tling Ubik—watch­ing the show might add yet anoth­er lay­er of bewil­der­ment to the already very strange expe­ri­ence of every­day life these days. But then again, “if you feel weird­ed out while watch­ing, that just means the show is doing its job.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A New 2‑In‑1 Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? & A Scan­ner Dark­ly

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 13 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

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

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

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Hear a Complete Reading of the Newly-Discovered Kurt Vonnegut Story, “The Drone King”

in Animation, Audio Books, Literature, Magazines, Sci Fi | December 4th, 2017

Twen­ty some years before a young engi­neer named Ray Tom­lin­son invent­ed email, writer Kurt Von­negut invent­ed bee-mail in “The Drone King,” a sto­ry that didn’t see the light of day until his friend and fel­low author Dan Wake­field unearthed it while going through old papers for a new Von­negut col­lec­tion.

The col­lec­tion’s co-edi­tor, Von­negut schol­ar Jerome Klinkowitz, esti­mates that it was writ­ten in the ear­ly 50s, like­ly before the pub­li­ca­tion of his first nov­el, Play­er Piano, in 1952.

This ear­ly work, recent­ly pub­lished in The Atlantic as well as Wake­field and Klinkow­itz’s col­lec­tion, shows an author whose gal­lows humor is already firm­ly in place.

Sev­er­al of his favorite themes crop up, too: the enthu­si­asm of the mis­guid­ed entre­pre­neur, the bat­tle of the sex­es, and tech­nol­o­gy tak­en to absurd extremes (i.e. bees deliv­er­ing scraps of mes­sages in soda straws tied to their tho­rax­es).

If we’re not mis­tak­en Indi­anapo­lis, Vonnegut’s boy­hood home, now host to his Memo­r­i­al Library, puts in an unbilled appear­ance, as well. The story’s Mil­len­ni­um Club bears an uncan­ny resem­blance to that city’s Ath­let­ic Club, now defunct.

The self-pity­ing male hap­less­ness Von­negut spoofs so ably feels just as skew­er-able in the post-Wein­stein era, though the dod­der­ing black waiter’s dialect is rather queasy-mak­ing, espe­cial­ly in the mouth of the white nar­ra­tor read­ing the sto­ry, above.

You can buy “The Drone King” as part of Kurt Von­negut Com­plete Sto­ries col­lec­tion or read it free online here. The Atlantic was also good enough to cre­ate an audio ver­sion. It’s excerpt­ed up top. And it appears in its entire­ty right above.

“The Drone King” will be added to our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Hear Kurt Vonnegut’s Nov­el, Cat’s Cra­dle, Get Turned into Avant-Garde Music (Fea­tur­ing Kurt Him­self)

Kurt Von­negut Pon­ders Why “Poor Amer­i­cans Are Taught to Hate Them­selves” in a Time­ly Pas­sage from Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A New 2‑In‑1 Illustrated Edition of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? & A Scanner Darkly

in Books, Sci Fi | October 31st, 2017

FYI: Illus­tra­tors Chris Skin­ner and Andrew Archer present a new illus­trat­ed edi­tion of two Philip K. Dick­’s nov­els, Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? & A Scan­ner Dark­ly. And it comes in a great for­mat. Read one nov­el, then flip the book upside down and enter the next altered real­i­ty.

The 2‑in‑1 book is only avail­able through the Folio Soci­ety web­site.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

Hear VALIS, an Opera Based on Philip K. Dick’s Meta­phys­i­cal Nov­el

Philip K. Dick Takes You Inside His Life-Chang­ing Mys­ti­cal Expe­ri­ence

Hear 6 Clas­sic Philip K. Dick Sto­ries Adapt­ed as Vin­tage Radio Plays

Philip K. Dick Makes Off-the-Wall Pre­dic­tions for the Future: Mars Colonies, Alien Virus­es & More (1981)

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

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Watch the New Trailer for Electric Dreams, the Philip K. Dick TV Series, Starring Bryan Cranston, Steve Buscemi & More

in Sci Fi, Television | October 10th, 2017

If you had told crit­ics and film exec­u­tives thir­ty-five years ago that Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner would be one of the most beloved sci-fi films of all time—that it would tran­scend cult sta­tus to become a near-reli­gious object in sci­ence fic­tion and ani­me filmmaking—you would like­ly have been laughed out of the room. If you had pre­dict­ed that, thir­ty-five years lat­er, it would spawn one of the most spec­tac­u­lar sequels imag­in­able, you might have been met with con­cern for your san­i­ty. The world was just not ready for Blade Run­ner in 1982, just as it was not ready for Philip K. Dick in the 50s when he began his writ­ing career and “couldn’t even pay the late fees on a library book.”

In the fol­low­ing decade, how­ev­er, Dick’s work came into its own. Many years before it pro­vid­ed a near-infal­li­ble source for tech­no­log­i­cal pre­science and exis­ten­tial futur­ism in cin­e­ma, Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?, the novel­la from which Blade Run­ner adapt­ed its sto­ry, got a Neb­u­la award nom­i­na­tion, one of three Dick received in the 60s. Five years ear­li­er, he won a Hugo award for The Man in the High Cas­tle.

Now, after the suc­cess of that spec­u­la­tive his­tor­i­cal novel’s grim Ama­zon adap­ta­tion, the com­pa­ny has part­nered with Chan­nel 4 and Sony for anoth­er small-screen Dick project—Elec­tric Dreams, co-pro­duced by Bryan Cranston, a long­time fan of the author.

An anthol­o­gy series based on Dick’s sto­ries, Elec­tric Dreams first airs on Chan­nel 4 in the U.K., and will soon move to Ama­zon, where Prime users will be able to stream the whole 10-episode sea­son for free. (If you aren’t a Prime user, you can get a 30-day free tri­al to watch the series, then keep or can­cel the mem­ber­ship.) Elec­tric Dreams reminds us that a cou­ple of phe­nom­e­na from Dick’s hey­day have made a sig­nif­i­cant come­back in recent years. First, imag­i­na­tive, high-con­cept anthol­o­gy shows like Char­lie Brooker’s Black Mir­ror and the Duplass broth­ers’ Room 104 hear­ken back to the suc­cess of The Twi­light Zone and less­er-known shows like Roald Dahl’s Way Out.

Sec­ond­ly, we’ve made a return to the para­noia, social unrest, author­i­tar­i­an­ism, and threats of nuclear war that formed the back­drops of Dick’s vision­ary fables. These are indeed “anx­ious times,” as Cranston says, but he and the show’s oth­er pro­duc­ers instruct­ed the writ­ers to “use the orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al as a spring­board to your own re-imag­in­ing of the story—keep the core… or idea behind it and enhance that and see how that affects not a Cold War peri­od when it was writ­ten, but now. How does it affect the mod­ern-day audi­ence?”

Giv­en the all-star cast and high-dol­lar pro­duc­tion val­ues evi­dent in the trail­er above, we can like­ly expect the same kind of qual­i­ty from Elec­tric Dreams as we have seen in near­ly every Dick adap­ta­tion thus far. And if it doesn’t catch on right away, well, that may be everyone’s loss but those view­ers who rec­og­nize, as Dick him­self rec­og­nized when he saw Blade Run­ner in 1982, that they have expe­ri­enced some­thing tru­ly unique.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

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

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

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Three Blade Runner Prequels: Watch Them Online

in Film, Sci Fi | October 4th, 2017

Even if you’ve spent each and every day since you first saw Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner wait­ing for a sequel, you still might not be ful­ly pre­pared for Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s Blade Run­ner 2049 when it opens in the­aters this Fri­day. The 1981 orig­i­nal took place in the Los Ange­les of the then-far-flung future of 2019, mean­ing that 30 years have elapsed in the Blade Run­ner uni­verse between its first fea­ture film and its sec­ond. Much has tak­en place over those three decades, some of it por­trayed by the three offi­cial short pre­quels released to the inter­net over the past month. Today we present them all in chrono­log­i­cal order to catch you up with what hap­pened after Har­ri­son Ford’s Blade Run­ner Rick Deckard picked up that origa­mi uni­corn and left the build­ing.

In 2020, the year after Blade Run­ner, the arti­fi­cial-being-mak­ing Tyrell Cor­po­ra­tion intro­duces a new mod­el of repli­cant, with a longer lifes­pan, called the Nexus 8S. Two years lat­er comes “the Black­out,” an elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse attack that destroys all tech­nol­o­gy with­in its reach. You can see it hap­pen in Blade Run­ner Black Out 2022, the short at the top of the post direct­ed by respect­ed Japan­ese ani­ma­tor Shinichi­ro Watan­abe (and fea­tur­ing a score by Fly­ing Lotus as well as a reprisal of the role of the qua­si-Esperan­to-speak­ing police offi­cer Gaff by Edward James Olmos).

Repli­cants hav­ing tak­en the blame for the Black­out, their pro­duc­tion gets legal­ly pro­hib­it­ed until the efforts of an orga­ni­za­tion called the Wal­lace Cor­po­ra­tion get the ban over­turned in 2030. The man at the top of the Wal­lace Cor­po­ra­tion, a cer­tain Nian­der Wal­lace, first appears in 2036: Nexus Dawn (mid­dle video), direct­ed by Rid­ley Scot­t’s son Luke.

In that pre­quel we see Wal­lace, who rose to promi­nence on his com­pa­ny’s solu­tion to glob­al food short­ages, sub­mit­ting for approval his lat­est repli­cant, the Nexus 9 (although his nego­ti­a­tion strat­e­gy leaves lit­tle room for com­pro­mise). The younger Scot­t’s 2048: Nowhere to Run (below), which intro­duces a new and impos­ing repli­cant char­ac­ter by the name of Sap­per Mor­ton, takes place just a year before the sequel, by which time, accord­ing to the time­line unveiled at this past sum­mer’s Com­ic-Con, “life on Earth has reached its lim­it and soci­ety divides between repli­cant and human.” Enter Ryan Gosling’s K, one of a new gen­er­a­tion of repli­cant- hunters, who goes out in search of a pre­de­ces­sor who went miss­ing some 30 years ago. All of this, of course, still leaves ques­tions unan­swered. Chiefly: will Blade Run­ner 2049 deliv­er what we’ve been wait­ing even more than three dea­cades for?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the New Ani­me Pre­quel to Blade Run­ner 2049, by Famed Japan­ese Ani­ma­tor Shinichi­ro Watan­abe

Jared Leto Stars in a New Pre­quel to Blade Run­ner 2049: Watch It Free Online

Blade Run­ner 2049’s New Mak­ing-Of Fea­turette Gives You a Sneak Peek Inside the Long-Await­ed Sequel

The Offi­cial Trail­er for Rid­ley Scott’s Long-Await­ed Blade Run­ner Sequel Is Final­ly Out

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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