Leonard Nimoy Reads Ray Bradbury Stories From The Martian Chronicles & The Illustrated Man (1975–76)

in Audio Books, Sci Fi | February 27th, 2015

Ray Brad­bury, author of The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles and Fahren­heit 451, con­tributed to sci­ence fic­tion a high­ly dis­tinc­tive voice; the now depart­ed Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, also con­tributed to sci­ence fic­tion a high­ly dis­tinc­tive voice. In the mid-sev­en­ties, a pair of record albums came out that togeth­er offered a tru­ly sin­gu­lar lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence: the voice of Brad­bury in the voice of Nimoy.

1975’s The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles and 1976’s The Illus­trat­ed Man con­tain Nimoy’s ren­di­tions of two well-known sto­ries, one per side, from each of Brad­bury’s epony­mous books. At the top of the post, you can hear The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles’ “There Will Come Soft Rains” and “Ush­er II.” At the bot­tom of the post, we have The Illus­trat­ed Man’s “The Veldt” and “Mar­i­onettes Inc.”

In our inter­net age, with its abun­dance of down­load­able audio and mobile media deliv­ery sys­tems, we’ve grown thor­ough­ly accus­tomed to the idea of the audio book. But 40 years ago, in the age of twelve-inch vinyl discs that could bare­ly hold 45 min­utes of con­tent, the ful­ly real­ized con­cept must have seemed more like some­thing we would thrill to Brad­bury him­self writ­ing about, or Nimoy him­self using on tele­vi­sion. But the vision­ar­ies in this case worked at the record label Caed­mon, “a pio­neer in the audio­book busi­ness,” accord­ing to the Inter­net Archive, “the first com­pa­ny to sell spo­ken word record­ings to the pub­lic,” and “the ‘seed’ of the audio­book indus­try.” They grew famous putting out record­ings of lit­er­ary lumi­nar­ies read­ing their own work: Dylan Thomas read­ing Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot read­ing T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein read­ing Gertrude Stein. But to my mind — or to my ear, any­way — the best of it hap­pened at the inter­sec­tions, like this one, of an era-defin­ing author, and a dif­fer­ent era-defin­ing read­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Ray Brad­bury: “The Things That You Love Should Be Things That You Do.” “Books Teach Us That”

Ray Brad­bury: Sto­ry of a Writer 1963 Film Cap­tures the Para­dox­i­cal Late Sci-Fi Author

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

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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Arthur C. Clarke Predicts in 2001 What the World Will Look By December 31, 2100

in Sci Fi, Science, Technology | January 29th, 2015

Clarke_sm

“Clarke sm” by Amy Marash. Licensed under Pub­lic Domain via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

When you want a vision of the future, I very much doubt you turn to Read­er’s Digest for it. But Arthur C. Clarke did once appear in its small-for­mat pages to pro­vide just that, and when Arthur C. Clarke talks about the future, you’d do well to lis­ten. Last year, we fea­tured a 1964 BBC doc­u­men­tary in which the sci­ence-fic­tion lumi­nary pre­dict­ed the inter­net, 3D print­ers, and trained mon­key ser­vants. Today, we’d like to link you up to his Read­er’s Digest pre­dic­tions from the com­par­a­tive­ly recent year of 2001 — one in which, for obvi­ous rea­sons, Clarke made the media rounds — which you can read in full at arthurcclarke.net. Some high­lights of his spec­u­la­tive time­line from 2001 to 2100:

  • By 2010, com­mer­cial nuclear devices, house­hold quan­tum gen­er­a­tors, and ful­ly re-engi­neered auto­mo­bile engines will have end­ed the Fos­sil Fuel Age. We’ll have seen the first acknowl­edged human clone and seen off the last human crim­i­nal.
  • By 2020, we’ll have dis­cov­ered a 76-meter octo­pus, fly on “aero­space-planes” (one of which will car­ry Prince Har­ry), and trade in “mega-watt-hours” instead of any now-known cur­ren­cies, and tsunamis caused by a mete­or will wreck the coasts of Green­land and Cana­da (prompt­ing the devel­op­ment of new mete­or-detect­ing tech­nolo­gies).
  • By 2030, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence will have reached human lev­el, we’ll have land­ed on Mars, com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed DNA will make pos­si­ble a real-life Juras­sic Park, and the neu­ro­log­i­cal “brain­cap” will allow us the direct sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence of any­thing at all.
  • By 2040, the “uni­ver­sal repli­ca­tor” will allow us to cre­ate any object at all in the com­fort of our own homes, result­ing in the phase-out of work and a boom in arts, enter­tain­ment, and edu­ca­tion.
  • By 2050, Buck­min­ster Fuller-style self-con­tained mobile homes become a real­i­ty, and humans scat­tered as far as “Earth, the Moon, Mars, Europa, Ganymede and Titan, and in orbit around Venus, Nep­tune and Plu­to” cel­e­brate the cen­te­nary of Sput­nik 1.
  • By 2090, Hal­ley’s comet will have returned, and on it we’ll have found life forms that vin­di­cate “Wick­ra­mas­inghe and Hoyle’s cen­tu­ry-old hypoth­e­sis that life exists through space.” We’ll also start burn­ing fos­sil fuels again, both as a replace­ment for the car­bon diox­ide we’ve “mined” from the air and to fore­stall the next Ice Age by warm­ing the globe back up a bit.
  • By 2100, we’ll have replaced rock­ets with a “space dri­ve” that lets us trav­el close to the speed of light. And so, Clarke writes, “his­to­ry begins…”

You’ll notice, of course, that we’re already behind Clarke’s vision, accord­ing to which many a still-improb­a­ble devel­op­ment also lies ahead in the near future. In any case, though, the end of crime, the begin­ning of pri­vate space trav­el, and the era of the Dymax­ion home must come soon­er or lat­er, must­n’t they? And as Clarke him­self admits, one plays a mug’s game when one pre­dicts, even when one does it with uncom­mon astute­ness. “In 1971 I pre­dict­ed the first Mars Land­ing in 1994,” he remem­bers in the pre­am­ble to his list. “On the oth­er hand, I thought I was being wild­ly opti­mistic in 1951 by sug­gest­ing a mis­sion to the moon in 1978. Neil Arm­strong and Buzz Aldrin beat me by almost a decade.”

But to this day, Clarke’s score­card looks bet­ter than most of ours: “I take pride in the fact that com­mu­ni­ca­tions satel­lites are placed exact­ly where I sug­gest­ed in 1945, and the name “Clarke Orbit” is often used (if only because it’s eas­i­er to say than ‘geo­sta­tion­ary orbit’).” Who knows what he could tell us to watch out for now if, as he pre­dict­ed in 2001, he’d lived to see his hun­dredth birth­day aboard the Hilton Orbiter Hotel?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arthur C. Clarke Nar­rates Film on Mandelbrot’s Frac­tals; David Gilmour Pro­vides the Sound­track

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

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

Bet­ter Liv­ing Through Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Utopi­an Designs: Revis­it the Dymax­ion Car, House, and Map

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma 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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Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Gets Turned Into “The Weirdest Sci-Fi Comic Ever Made” by Jack Kirby

in Comics/Cartoons, Sci Fi | January 27th, 2015

Kirby 2001 covers

Sure, we all enjoyed the adap­ta­tion of 2001: A Space Odyssey pre­sent­ed on the Howard John­son’s chil­dren’s menu from 1968 that we fea­tured last May. But would you believe that, when you swap out the name Howard John­son for that of Jack Kir­by, you get a work of high­er artis­tic mer­it? In his long career, the wide­ly respect­ed com­ic book artist, writer, and edi­tor put in time on both the DC and Mar­vel sides of the fence. 1976’s 2001: A Space Odyssey com­ic book, a meet­ing of Kir­by’s mind with those of Stan­ley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, marked his return to Mar­vel after spend­ing the ear­ly 70s at DC.

Kubrick­o­nia, which calls the com­mis­sion “a match made in bizarro world heav­en,” describes the prod­uct: “The adap­ta­tion was writ­ten & pen­ciled by Kir­by with ink­ing duties car­ried out by Frank Gia­coia. The almost 2 times larg­er than the reg­u­lar com­ic-book for­mat suit­ed Kir­by’s out­landish pop style, but this was a great tal­ent mere­ly going through the motions.” The Sequart Orga­ni­za­tion’s Julian Dar­ius calls it “sure­ly one of the strangest sci-fi fran­chise comics ever pub­lished,” a stuffy mar­riage between Kir­by’s “bom­bas­tic,” “action-ori­ent­ed,” “in-your-face” art and the style of Kubrick­’s film, one “all about the sub­tle. No one ever accused Kir­by of being sub­tle. Indeed, his almost com­plete lack of sub­tle­ty is part of his charm, but it’s not a charm one could pos­si­bly imag­ine fit­ting 2001.”

2001-adaptation-page-13-660x901

At The Dis­solve, Noel Mur­ray includes an exam­i­na­tion of Kir­by’s 2001 in the site’s “Adven­tures in Licens­ing” col­umn. Kir­by’s descrip­tion of Kubrick­’s immor­tal mil­len­nia-span­ning match cut, which the arti­cle quotes as an open­er, tells you every­thing you need to know:

As the surge of ela­tion sweeps through him, Moon­watch­er shouts in vic­to­ry and throws his weapon at the sky!! High­er and high­er, it sails — aimed at the infi­nite where the count­less stars wait for the com­ing of man… And, man comes to space!! Across the ago­niz­ing ages he fol­lows the des­tiny bequeathed to him by the mono­lith.

2001: A Space Odyssey in comics, which com­pris­es not just the over­sized book but ten month­ly issues that expand­ed upon the film — tak­ing it in, shall we say, a dif­fer­ent direc­tion than either Kubrick or Clarke might have envi­sioned — has, as you can see, inspired no small amount of dis­cus­sion among sci­ence fic­tion and com­ic book enthu­si­asts. Dar­ius wrote a whole book called The Weird­est Sci-Fi Com­ic Ever Made. At Sci­FiDi­men­sons, Robert L. Bryant Jr. and Robert B. Cooke offer two more analy­ses of this unusu­al chap­ter in the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can sequen­tial art. What­ev­er its mer­its as read­ing mate­r­i­al, it shows us that genius plus genius does­n’t always pro­duce genius — but it nev­er fails to pro­duce some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing.

You can check out scans of the first issue of 2001: A Space Odyssey over on this web site.

2001-adaptation-page-22-e1364674017135-660x593

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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 as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma 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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Neil Gaiman Reads “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury”

in Audio Books, Literature, Sci Fi | January 15th, 2015

man who forgot ray bradbury

Neil Gaiman sent Ray Brad­bury a gift for what turned out to be his last birth­day, his 91st. It was a sto­ry called “The Man Who For­got Ray Brad­bury.” And when Brad­bury’s edi­tor read it to the bed-rid­den author, he report­ed­ly took great plea­sure in it.

What could have been bet­ter? I guess only hear­ing Neil Gaiman read the sto­ry him­self. Which is pre­cise­ly what you can do with the audio below.

Gaiman’s read­ing was taped at the Aladdin The­ater in Port­land, Ore­gon. You can read the text of the sto­ry over at i09. We have many more instances of Gaiman read­ing Gaiman in our col­lec­tion of Free Neil Gaiman Sto­ries.

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:

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman Reads Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham

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Isaac Asimov Wrote “Gross” Limericks — Lots of Them

in Poetry, Sci Fi | January 7th, 2015

asimov gross limericks
Isaac Asi­mov — he’s best known for his mas­ter­ful works of sci­ence fic­tion.  He was also a pro­fes­sor of bio­chem­istry at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty. A com­mit­ted human­ist. And some­one who enjoyed writ­ing lots of dirty lim­er­icks. Some­where on his list of 500+ books, you will find Lech­er­ous Lim­er­icks (1976), Lim­er­icks: Too Gross (1978), A Grossery of Lim­er­icks (1981), and Asi­mov Laughs Again: More Than 700 Jokes, Lim­er­icks, and Anec­dotes (1993). In two of these vol­umes, Asi­mov sparred with pop­u­lar poet and Dante trans­la­tor John Cia­r­di, each writ­ing dirty poems, and try­ing to mas­ter a rather strict poet­ic form that began in ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry Eng­land.

Most of the lim­er­icks are indeed a “gross.” Many are crude. Some would be con­sid­ered down­right offen­sive by 2015 stan­dards. But, if you want a taste of what Asi­mov served up, you can try out these tamer ones from Lim­er­icks: Too Gross.

The haughty philoso­pher, Pla­to
Would unbend to a sweet young toma­to.
Though she might be naive
Like you would­n’t believe
He would patient­ly show her the way to.

A cer­tain young fel­low named Scott
Once jumped his young bride on their cot.
He intend­ed no shirk­ing.
But from sheer over­work­ing
A dry run is all that she got.

If you want to see Asi­mov at his tamest, you can also check out his book Lim­er­icks for Chil­dren.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Isaac Asi­mov Imag­ines Learn­ing in the Elec­tron­ic Age … and Gets It Quite Right (1989)

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Kurt Vonnegut Reveals “Why My Dog Is Not a Humanist” in His Humanist of the Year Award Speech (1992)

in Life, Literature, Philosophy, Religion, Sci Fi, Science | December 26th, 2014

Note: Von­negut starts talk­ing at around the 3:40 mark.

This is human­ism, as explained by bio­chemist, sci­ence fic­tion author and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Human­ist Asso­ci­a­tion Isaac Asi­mov:

Human­ists believe that human beings pro­duced the pro­gres­sive advance of human soci­ety and also the ills that plague it. They believe that if the ills are to be alle­vi­at­ed, it is human­i­ty that will have to do the job. They dis­be­lieve in the influ­ence of the super­nat­ur­al on either the good or the bad of soci­ety, on either its ills or the alle­vi­a­tion of those ills.

There’s a wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed Kurt Von­negut quote that puts things even more suc­cinct­ly:

I am a human­ist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decent­ly with­out any expec­ta­tion of rewards or pun­ish­ment after I’m dead.

It’s a def­i­n­i­tion Von­negut, Asimov’s hon­orary suc­ces­sor as AHA pres­i­dent, a scientist’s son, and, famous­ly, a sur­vivor of the fire­bomb­ing of Dres­den, embod­ied, though sure­ly not the only one he coined.

In his 1992 accep­tance speech for the association’s Human­ist of the Year award, above, he recalls how a stu­dent pressed him for a def­i­n­i­tion. He chose to fob the kid off on bet­ter paid col­leagues at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, but pri­vate­ly came up with anoth­er take:

…a human­ist, per­haps, was some­body who was crazy about human beings, who, like Will Rogers, had nev­er met one he did­n’t like. That cer­tain­ly did not describe me. It did describe my dog, though.

As the title of Vonnegut’s speech implies (“Why My Dog is Not a Human­ist”), Sandy, his undis­crim­i­nat­ing Hun­gar­i­an sheep­dog, ulti­mate­ly fell short of sat­is­fy­ing the cri­te­ria that would have labelled him a human­ist. He lacked the capac­i­ty for ratio­nal thought of the high­est order, and more­over, he regard­ed all humans — not just Von­negut — as gods.

Ergo, your dog is prob­a­bly not a human­ist either.

Char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly, Von­negut ranged far and wide in his con­sid­er­a­tion of the mat­ter, touch­ing on a num­ber of top­ics that remain ger­mane, some 20 years after his remarks were made: race, exces­sive force, the treat­ment of prisoners…and Bill Cos­by.

For intro­duc­tion to human­ism, please see:  Stephen Fry Explains Human­ism in 4 Ani­mat­ed Videos: Hap­pi­ness, Truth and the Mean­ing of Life & Death

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

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

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Watch the Opening of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with the Original, Unused Score

in Film, Music, Sci Fi | December 22nd, 2014

How does a movie become a “clas­sic”? Expla­na­tions, nev­er less than utter­ly sub­jec­tive, will vary from cinephile to cinephile, but I would sub­mit that clas­sic-film sta­tus, as tra­di­tion­al­ly under­stood, requires that all ele­ments of the pro­duc­tion work in at least near-per­fect har­mo­ny: the cin­e­matog­ra­phy, the cast­ing, the edit­ing, the design, the set­ting, the score. Out­side first-year film stud­ies sem­i­nars and delib­er­ate­ly con­trar­i­an cul­ture columns, the label of clas­sic, once attained, goes prac­ti­cal­ly undis­put­ed. Even those who active­ly dis­like Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, for instance, would sure­ly agree that its every last audio­vi­su­al nuance serves its dis­tinc­tive, bold vision — espe­cial­ly that open­ing use of “Thus Spake Zarathus­tra.”

But Kubrick did­n’t always intend to use that piece, nor the oth­er orches­tral works we’ve come to close­ly asso­ciate with mankind’s ven­tures into realms beyond Earth and strug­gles with intel­li­gence of its own inven­tion. Accord­ing to Jason Kot­tke, Kubrick had com­mis­sioned an orig­i­nal score from A Street­car Named Desire, Spar­ta­cus, Cleopa­tra, and Who’s Afraid of Vir­ginia Woolf com­pos­er Alex North.

At the top of the post, you can see 2001’s open­ing with North’s music, and below you can hear 38 min­utes of his score on Spo­ti­fy. As to the ques­tion of why Kubrick stuck instead with the tem­po­rary score of Strauss, Ligeti, and Khatch­a­turi­an he’d used in edit­ing, Kot­tke quotes from Michel Cimen­t’s inter­view with the film­mak­er:

How­ev­er good our best film com­posers may be, they are not a Beethoven, a Mozart or a Brahms. Why use music which is less good when there is such a mul­ti­tude of great orches­tral music avail­able from the past and from our own time? [ … ]  Although [North] and I went over the pic­ture very care­ful­ly, and he lis­tened to these tem­po­rary tracks and agreed that they worked fine and would serve as a guide to the musi­cal objec­tives of each sequence he, nev­er­the­less, wrote and record­ed a score which could not have been more alien to the music we had lis­tened to, and much more seri­ous than that, a score which, in my opin­ion, was com­plete­ly inad­e­quate for the film.

North did­n’t find out about Kubrick­’s choice until 2001’s New York City pre­miere. Not an envi­able sit­u­a­tion, cer­tain­ly, but not the worst thing that ever hap­pened to a col­lab­o­ra­tor who failed to rise to the direc­tor’s expec­ta­tions.

For more Kubrick and clas­si­cal music, see our recent post: The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

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:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Gets a Brand New Trail­er to Cel­e­brate Its Dig­i­tal Re-Release

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

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

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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Blade Runner Spoofed in Three Japanese Commercials (and Generally Loved in Japan)

in Animation, Sci Fi, Television, Video Games | December 12th, 2014

Blade Run­ner’s vision of a thor­ough­ly Japan­i­fied Los Ange­les in the year 2019 reflects the west­ern eco­nom­ic anx­i­eties of the ear­ly 1980s. And while that once far-flung year may not have come quite yet, Japan — giv­en the burst­ing of its post­war finan­cial bub­ble and the “lost decade” of the 1990s that fol­lowed — looks unlike­ly to own a frac­tion as much of the Unit­ed States as Rid­ley Scot­t’s Philip K. Dick adap­ta­tion (and many oth­er futur­is­tic sto­ries besides) assumed it even­tu­al­ly would. Still, the film’s cul­tur­al proph­esy came true: even dur­ing its eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion, Japan exer­cised more “soft pow­er” than ever before, turn­ing the world to the unique claims of its cul­ture, from the refine­ment of its cui­sine to the hyper­ac­tive exu­ber­ance of its music and ani­ma­tion to the match­less ele­gance of its tra­di­tion­al aes­thet­ics.

Even as Blade Run­ner showed us how much Japan­ese style would one day influ­ence, the style of the film had, for its part, an imme­di­ate influ­ence on Japan. Though famous­ly unap­pre­ci­at­ed by west­ern­ers on its ini­tial release (“a waste of time,” said Siskel and Ebert), its pro­to-cyber­punk sen­si­bil­i­ty won the hearts of Japan­ese view­ers, and Japan­ese cre­ators, right away. The video at the top of the post col­lects three Japan­ese tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials that both spoof and pay homage to Blade Run­ner: the first for the Hon­da Beat, a Japan-only road­ster; the sec­ond (an astute par­o­dy of a par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable scene) for Meni­con con­tact lens­es; and the third for mobile ser­vice provider J‑Phone.

But the movie’s effect on Japan did­n’t stop at the adver­tis­ing indus­try. The 1987 ani­mat­ed series Bub­blegum Cri­sis, which fol­lows the adven­tures of a cyborg-bat­tling team in the “Mega Tokyo” of 2032, plays so much like a home­grown Blade Run­ner that a fan could cre­ate the sec­ond video above: an ani­mat­ed recre­ation of Blade Run­ner’s trail­er, using all its orig­i­nal sound, with Bub­blegum Cri­sis’ footage. The 1988 video game Snatch­er stars the decid­ed­ly Har­ri­son-For­dian Gillian Seed, a detec­tive in pur­suit of the tit­u­lar killer androids in the “Neo Kobe” of 2044. You can still see much of what the film inspired, and what inspired in the film, in major Japan­ese cities today. Even Los Ange­les has made strides here and there toward the Blade Run­ner future, though I regret to admit that we still await our tow­er-side geisha.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

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)

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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