Hyperland: The “Fantasy Documentary” in Which Douglas Adams and Doctor Who’s Tom Baker Imagine the World Wide Web (1990)

in History, Sci Fi, Technology, Television | May 14th, 2020

Thir­ty years ago, the inter­net we use today would have looked like sci­ence fic­tion. Now as then, we spend a great deal of time star­ing at streams of video, but the high-tech 21st cen­tu­ry has endowed us with the abil­i­ty to cus­tomize those streams as nev­er before. No longer do we have to set­tle for tra­di­tion­al tele­vi­sion and the tyran­ny of “what’s on”; we can fol­low our curios­i­ty wher­ev­er it leads through vast, ever-expand­ing realms of image, sound, and text. No less a sci­ence-fic­tion writer than Dou­glas Adams dreams of just such realms in Hyper­land, a 1990 BBC “fan­ta­sy doc­u­men­tary” that opens to find him fast asleep amid the mind­less sound and fury spout­ed unceas­ing­ly by his tele­vi­sion set — so unceas­ing­ly, in fact, that it keeps on spout­ing even when Adams gets up and toss­es it into a junk­yard.

Amid the scrap heaps Adams meets a ghost of tech­nol­o­gy’s future: his “agent,” a dig­i­tal fig­ure played by Doc­tor Who star Tom Bak­er. “I have the hon­or to pro­vide instant access to every piece of infor­ma­tion stored dig­i­tal­ly any­where in the world,” says Bak­er’s Vir­gil to Adams’ Dante. “Any pic­ture or film, any sound, any book, any sta­tis­tic, any fact — any con­nec­tion between any­thing you care to think of.”

Adams’ fans know how much the notion must have appealed to him, unex­pect­ed con­nec­tions between dis­parate aspects of real­i­ty being a run­ning theme in his fic­tion. It became espe­cial­ly promi­nent in the Dirk Gen­tly’s Holis­tic Detec­tive Agency Series, whose wide range of ref­er­ences includes Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan — one of the many pieces of infor­ma­tion Adams has his agent pull up in Hyper­land.

Adams’ jour­ney along this pro­to-Infor­ma­tion Super­high­way also includes stops at Beethoven’s 9th Sym­pho­ny, Picas­so’s Guer­ni­ca, and Kurt Von­negut’s the­o­ry of the shape of all sto­ries. Such a path­way will feel famil­iar to any­one who reg­u­lar­ly goes down “rab­bit holes” on the inter­net today, a pur­suit — or per­haps com­pul­sion — enabled by hyper­text. Already that term sounds old fash­ioned, but at the dawn of the 1990s active­ly fol­low­ing “links” from one piece of infor­ma­tion, so com­mon now as to require no intro­duc­tion or expla­na­tion, struck many as a mind-bend­ing nov­el­ty. Thus the pro­gram’s seg­ments on the his­to­ry of the rel­e­vant tech­nolo­gies, begin­ning with U.S. gov­ern­ment sci­en­tist Van­nevar Bush and the the­o­ret­i­cal “Memex” sys­tem he came up with at the end of World War II — and first described in an Atlantic Month­ly arti­cle you can, thanks to hyper­text, eas­i­ly read right now.

Though to an extent required to stand for the con­tem­po­rary view­er, Adams was hard­ly a tech­no­log­i­cal neo­phyte. An ardent ear­ly adopter, he pur­chased the very first Apple Mac­in­tosh com­put­er ever sold in Europe. “I hap­pen to know you’ve writ­ten inter­ac­tive fic­tion your­self,” says Bak­er, refer­ring to the adven­ture games Adams designed for Info­com, one of them based on his beloved Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy nov­els. Though Adams’ con­sid­er­able tech savvy makes all this look amus­ing­ly pre­scient, he could­n’t have known just then how con­nect­ed every­one and every­thing was about to become. “While Dou­glas was cre­at­ing Hyper­land,” says his offi­cial web site, “a stu­dent at CERN in Switzer­land was work­ing on a lit­tle hyper­text project he called the World Wide Web.” And despite his ear­ly death, the man who dreamed of an elec­tron­ic “guide­book” con­tain­ing and con­nect­ing all the knowl­edge in the uni­verse lived long enough to see that such a thing would one day become a real­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Video Game Free Online, Designed by Dou­glas Adams in 1984

In 1999, David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good and Bad of the Inter­net: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

John Tur­tur­ro Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to the World Wide Web in 1999: Watch A Beginner’s Guide To The Inter­net

Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Author William Gib­son Pre­dicts in 1997 How the Inter­net Will Change Our World

Sci-Fi Author J.G. Bal­lard Pre­dicts the Rise of Social Media (1977)

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Inter­net & PC in 1974

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Star Trek: World-Building Over Generations—Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #42

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | May 7th, 2020

The world-wide Trib­ble infes­ta­tion and Star Trek: Picard drop­ping make this an apt time to address our most philo­soph­i­cal sci-fi fran­chise. 44 years of thought exper­i­ments (with pho­ton tor­pe­does!) about what it is to be human should have taught us some­thing, and Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er along with Drew Jack­son (Eri­ca’s hus­band) reflect on what makes a Star Trek sto­ry, world build­ing over gen­er­a­tions in Gene Rod­den­ber­ry’s land, canon you don’t remem­ber vs. some­thing that just has­n’t been shown on screen, Trek vs. Wars, and step-chil­dren like The Orville and Galaxy Quest.

We have gath­ered a heap of arti­cles for fur­ther cog­i­ta­tion:

For some sug­gest­ed episodes to catch up on, there are lists online rec­om­mend­ing those from the orig­i­nal series and from the fran­chise over­all. There are also fan cre­ations like these orig­i­nal series episodes, a Star Trek musi­cal, and of course the Impro­vised Star Trek pod­cast. For some rel­e­vant words from Rod Rod­den­ber­ry, check out episode 55 of the Mis­sion Log pod­cast.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

 

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Jules Verne’s Most Famous Books Were Part of a 54-Volume Masterpiece, Featuring 4,000 Illustrations: See Them Online

in Art, Books, Sci Fi | February 10th, 2020

Not many read­ers of the 21st cen­tu­ry seek out the work of pop­u­lar writ­ers of the 19th cen­tu­ry, but when they do, they often seek out the work of Jules Verne. Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth, Twen­ty Thou­sand Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days: fair to say that we all know the titles of these fan­tas­ti­cal French tales from the 1860s and 70s, and more than a few of us have actu­al­ly read them. But how many of us know that they all belong to a sin­gle series, the 54-vol­ume Voy­ages Extra­or­di­naires, that Verne pub­lished from 1863 until the end of his life? Verne described the pro­jec­t’s goal to an inter­view­er thus: “to con­clude in sto­ry form my whole sur­vey of the world’s sur­face and the heav­ens.”

Verne intend­ed to edu­cate, but at the same time to enter­tain and even artis­ti­cal­ly impress: “My object has been to depict the earth, and not the earth alone, but the uni­verse,” he said. “And I have tried at the same time to real­ize a very high ide­al of beau­ty of style.” This he accom­plished with great suc­cess in a time and place with­out even what we would now con­sid­er a ful­ly lit­er­ate pub­lic.

As philoso­pher Marc Sori­ano writes of the 1860s when Verne began pub­lish­ing, “The dri­ve for lit­er­a­cy in France has been under­way since the Guizot Law of 1833, but there is still much to do. Any well-advised edi­tor must aid his read­ers who have not yet achieved a good read­ing pro­fi­cien­cy.”

Hence the need for illus­tra­tions: beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly and nar­ra­tive­ly faith­ful illus­tra­tions, and above all a great many illus­tra­tions: over 4,000 of them, by the count of Arthur B. Evans in his essay on the series’ artists, “an aver­age of 60+ illus­tra­tions per nov­el, one for every 6–8 pages of text.” Still today, “most mod­ern French reprints of the Voy­ages Extra­or­di­naires con­tin­ue to fea­ture their orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions — recap­tur­ing the ‘feel’ of Verne’s socio-his­tor­i­cal milieu and evok­ing that sense of far­away exoti­cism and futur­is­tic awe which the orig­i­nal read­ers once expe­ri­enced from these texts. And yet, to date, the bulk of Vern­ian crit­i­cism has vir­tu­al­ly ignored the cru­cial role played by these illus­tra­tions in Verne’s oeu­vre.”

Evans iden­ti­fies four dif­fer­ent types of illus­tra­tions in the series: “ren­der­ings of the pro­tag­o­nists of the sto­ry — e.g., por­traits like the one of Impey Bar­bi­cane in De la terre à la lune”; “panoram­ic and post­card-like” views of the “exot­ic locales, unusu­al sights, and flo­ra and fau­na which the heroes encounter dur­ing their jour­ney, like the one from Vingt mille lieues sous les mers depict­ing divers walk­ing on the ocean floor”; “doc­u­men­ta­tion­al” illus­tra­tions like “the map of the Polar regions (hand-drawn by Verne him­self) for his 1864 nov­el Les Voy­ages et aven­tures du cap­i­taine Hat­teras”; and por­tay­als of “a spe­cif­ic moment of action in the narrative—e.g., the one from Voy­age au cen­tre de la terre where Prof. Liden­brock, Axel, and Hans are sud­den­ly caught in a light­ning storm on a sub­ter­ranean ocean.”

Verne and his edi­tor Pierre-Jules Het­zel com­mis­sioned these illus­tra­tions from no few­er than eight artists, a group includ­ing Edouard Riou, Alphonse de Neuville, Emile-Antoine Bayard (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), and Léon Benett — all well-known artists in late 19th-cen­tu­ry France, and made even more so by their work in the Voy­ages Extra­or­di­naires. You can browse a com­plete gallery of the series’ orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions here, and if you like, enrich the expe­ri­ence with this exten­sive essay by Ter­ry Har­pold on “read­ing” these images in con­text.

Togeth­er with the sto­ries them­selves, on the back of which Verne remains the most trans­lat­ed sci­ence-fic­tion author of all time, they allow Har­pold to make the cred­i­ble claim that “the tex­tu­al-graph­ic domain con­sti­tut­ed by these objects is unmatched in its breadth and vari­ety; no oth­er cor­pus asso­ci­at­ed with a sin­gle author is com­pa­ra­ble.” Human knowl­edge of the uni­verse has widened and deep­ened since Verne’s day, but for sheer intel­lec­tu­al and adven­tur­ous won­der about what that uni­verse might con­tain, has any writer, from any era or land, out­done him since?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Émile-Antoine Bayard’s Vivid Illus­tra­tions of Jules Verne’s Around the Moon: The First Seri­ous Works of Space Art (1870)

Jules Verne Accu­rate­ly Pre­dicts What the 20th Cen­tu­ry Will Look Like in His Lost Nov­el, Paris in the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry (1863)

How French Artists in 1899 Envi­sioned Life in the Year 2000: Draw­ing the Future

Hear Rick Wakeman’s Musi­cal Adap­ta­tion of Jules Verne’s Jour­ney to the Cen­tre of the Earth, “One of Prog Rock’s Crown­ing Achieve­ments”

Petite Planète: Dis­cov­er Chris Marker’s Influ­en­tial 1950s Trav­el Pho­to­book Series

The Art of Sci-Fi Book Cov­ers: From the Fan­tas­ti­cal 1920s to the Psy­che­del­ic 1960s & Beyond

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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42 Hours of Ambient Sounds from Blade Runner, Alien, Star Trek and Doctor Who Will Help You Relax & Sleep

in Health, Sci Fi | February 6th, 2020

Back in 2009, the musi­cian who goes by the name “Cheesy Nir­vosa” began exper­i­ment­ing with ambi­ent music, before even­tu­al­ly launch­ing a YouTube chan­nel where he “com­pos­es long­form space and sci­fi ambi­ence.” Or what he oth­er­wise calls “ambi­ent geek sleep aids.” Click on the video above, and you can get lulled to sleep lis­ten­ing to the ambi­ent dron­ing sound–get ready Blade Run­ner fans!– heard in Rich Deckard’s apart­ment. It runs a good con­tin­u­ous 12 hours.

You’re more a Star Trek fan? Ok, try nod­ding off to the idling engine noise of a ship fea­tured in Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion. Mr. Nir­vosa cleaned up a sam­ple from the show and then looped it for 24 hours. That makes for one long sleep.

Or how about 12 hours of ambi­ent engine noise gen­er­at­ed by the USCSS Nos­tro­mo in Alien?

Final­ly, and per­haps my favorite, Cheesy cre­at­ed a 12 hour clip of the ambi­ent sounds made by the Tardis, the time machine made famous by the British sci-fi TV show, Doc­tor Who. But watch out. You might wake up liv­ing in a dif­fer­ent time and place.

For lots more ambi­ent sci-fi sounds (Star Wars, The Matrix, Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca, etc. ) check out this super long playlist here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March 2017.

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:

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion: 17,500 Entries on All Things Sci-Fi Are Now Free Online

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

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A Concise Breakdown of How Time Travel Works in Popular Movies, Books & TV Shows

in Film, Literature, Sci Fi | January 24th, 2020

As least since H.G. Wells’ 1895 nov­el The Time Machine, time trav­el has been a promis­ing sto­ry­telling con­cept. Alas, it has sel­dom deliv­ered on that promise: whether their char­ac­ters jump for­ward into the future, back­ward into the past, or both, the past 125 years of time-trav­el sto­ries have too often suf­fered from inel­e­gance, incon­sis­ten­cy, and implau­si­bil­i­ty. Well, of course they’re implau­si­ble, every­one but Ronald Mal­lett might say — they’re sto­ries about time trav­el. But fic­tion only has to work on its own terms, not real­i­ty’s. The trou­ble is that the fic­tion of time trav­el can all too eas­i­ly stum­ble over the poten­tial­ly infi­nite con­vo­lu­tions and para­dox­es inher­ent in the sub­ject mat­ter.

In the Min­utePhysics video above, Hen­ry Reich sorts out how time-trav­el sto­ries work (and fail to work) using noth­ing but mark­ers and paper. For the time-trav­el enthu­si­ast, the core inter­est of such fic­tions isn’t so much the spec­ta­cle of char­ac­ters hurtling into the future or past but “the dif­fer­ent ways time trav­el can influ­ence causal­i­ty, and thus the plot, with­in the uni­verse of each sto­ry.” As an exam­ple of “100 per­cent real­is­tic trav­el” Reich points to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, in which space trav­el­ers at light speed expe­ri­ence only days or months while years pass back on Earth. The same thing hap­pens in Plan­et of the Apes, whose astro­nauts return from space think­ing they’ve land­ed on the wrong plan­et when they’ve actu­al­ly land­ed in the dis­tant future.

But when we think of time trav­el per se, we more often think of sto­ries about how active­ly trav­el­ing to the past, say, can change its future — and thus the sto­ry’s “present.” Reich pos­es two major ques­tions to ask about such sto­ries. The first is “whether or not the time trav­el­er is there when his­to­ry hap­pens the first time around. Was “the time-trav­el­ing ver­sion of you always there to begin with?” Or “does the very act of time trav­el­ing to the past change what hap­pened and force the uni­verse onto a dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry of his­to­ry from the one you expe­ri­enced pri­or to trav­el­ing?” The sec­ond ques­tion is “who has free will when some­body is time trav­el­ing” — that is, “whose actions are allowed to move his­to­ry onto a dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry, and whose aren’t?”

We can all look into our own pasts for exam­ples of how our favorite time-trav­el sto­ries have dealt with those ques­tions. Reich cites such well-known time-trav­el­ers’ tales as A Christ­mas Car­ol, Ground­hog Day, and Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture, as well, of course, as Back to the Future, the most pop­u­lar drama­ti­za­tion of the the­o­ret­i­cal chang­ing of his­tor­i­cal time­lines caused by trav­el into the past. Rian John­son’s Loop­er treats that phe­nom­e­non more com­plex­ly, allow­ing for more free will and tak­ing into account more of the effects a char­ac­ter in one time peri­od would have on that same char­ac­ter in anoth­er. Con­sult­ing on that film was Shane Car­ruth, whose Primer — my own per­son­al favorite time-trav­el fic­tion — had already tak­en time trav­el “to the extreme, with time trav­el with­in time trav­el with­in time trav­el.”

Har­ry Pot­ter and the Pris­on­er of Azk­a­ban, Reich’s per­son­al favorite time-trav­el fic­tion, exhibits a clar­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy uncom­mon in the genre. J.K. Rowl­ing accom­plish­es this by fol­low­ing the rule that “while you’re expe­ri­enc­ing your ini­tial pre-time trav­el pas­sage through a par­tic­u­lar point in his­to­ry, your time-trav­el­ing clone is also already there, doing every­thing you’ll even­tu­al­ly do when you time-trav­el your­self.” This sin­gle-time-line ver­sion of time trav­el, in which “you can’t change the past because the past already hap­pened,” gets around prob­lems that have long bedev­iled oth­er time-trav­el fic­tions. But it also demon­strates the impor­tance of self-con­sis­ten­cy in fic­tion of all kinds: “In order to care about the char­ac­ters in a sto­ry,” Reich says, “we have to believe that actions have con­se­quences.” Sto­ries, in oth­er words, must obey their own rules — even, and per­haps espe­cial­ly, sto­ries involv­ing time-trav­el­ing child wiz­ards.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Ori­gin of Time Trav­el Fic­tion?: New Video Essay Explains How Time Trav­el Writ­ing Got Its Start with Charles Dar­win & His Lit­er­ary Peers

Pro­fes­sor Ronald Mal­lett Wants to Build a Time Machine in this Cen­tu­ry … and He’s Not Kid­ding

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

What Hap­pened When Stephen Hawk­ing Threw a Cock­tail Par­ty for Time Trav­el­ers (2009)

Pret­ty Much Pop #22 Untan­gles Time-Trav­el Sce­nar­ios in the Ter­mi­na­tor Fran­chise and Oth­er Media

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #27 Discusses the Impact and Aesthetics of Star Wars

in Film, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | January 16th, 2020

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is PMP-For-the-Love-of-Star-Wars-400-x-800.jpg

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt grasp the low-hang­ing fruit in pop cul­ture to talk about Star Wars: The unique place that these films have in the brains of peo­ple of a cer­tain age, how we grap­pled with the pre­quels, and why we feel the need to fill in and argue about the details.

We pri­mar­i­ly focus on the two most recent ema­na­tions of this beast, The Man­dalo­ri­an and Rise of Sky­walk­er. We talk alien and droid aes­thet­ics (how much cute­ness is too much?), sto­ry­telling for kids vs. adults reliv­ing their child­hood, pac­ing, plot­ting, cast­ing, whether celebri­ty appear­ances ruin the Star Wars mood, cre­ation by an auteur vs. a com­mit­tee, and what we’d like to see next.

We had enough to say about this that we did­n’t need to draw on online arti­cles, but here’s a sam­pling of what we looked at any­way:

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. In this case, it’s all just more Star Wars talk, cov­er­ing droid body dys­mor­phia and human­iza­tion, the cycle of embod­i­ment via action fig­ures and re-pre­sen­ta­tion on the screen, tragedy in Star Wars vs. Watch­men, mak­ing up for racism in Star Wars through sym­pa­thet­ic por­tray­als of Sand Per­son cul­ture, watch­ing par­tic­u­lar scenes many times, clown bik­er troop­ers, and more. Don’t miss it!

This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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RIP Syd Mead: Revisit the Life and & Art of the Designer Behind Blade Runner, Alien & More

in Art, Film, Sci Fi | January 1st, 2020

Has any year ever sound­ed more futur­is­tic than 2020, the one we all live in as of today? 2019 came close, most­ly because it was the year in which Blade Run­ner took place. Though ini­tial­ly a flop, Rid­ley Scot­t’s cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of Philip K. Dick­’s nov­el Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? soon became a con­tender for the most influ­en­tial vision of the future ever put on screen. This owes not just to the direc­to­r­i­al skill of Scott him­self, but also of the many col­lab­o­ra­tors who set their imag­i­na­tions to the year 2019 — then near­ly 40 years in the future — along with him. Among the most impor­tant was con­cept artist Syd Mead, who died this past Mon­day at the age of 86.

Mead cred­it­ed as an inspi­ra­tion for his own Blade Run­ner work Métal hurlant, the 1970s French com­ic book that brought atten­tion to the even more deeply influ­en­tial art of Moe­bius. But his own career as an illus­tra­tor and indus­tri­al design­er, already far along by that time, had also pre­pared him thor­ough­ly for the job. That career began in 1959 with Mead­’s recruit­ment to the Ford Motor Com­pa­ny’s Advanced Styling Stu­dio, where he spent two years think­ing up the cars of the future. He then illus­trat­ed pub­li­ca­tions for oth­er cor­po­ra­tions before launch­ing his own design firm in 1970, work­ing with Euro­pean clients includ­ing Philips and Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Hotels, and lat­er near­ly every Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tion that mat­tered, from Sony, Bandai, and NHK to Minol­ta, Dentsu, and Hon­da.

That was in the ear­ly 1980s, when we all looked upon Japan as a vision of the future. To an extent we still do, not least because of the Japan­i­fied future envi­sioned in Blade Run­ner — as well as the one envi­sioned in its recent sequel Blade Run­ner 2046, also a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of Mead­’s con­tri­bu­tions. No mat­ter how much Japan fas­ci­nat­ed Mead, Japan repaid that fas­ci­na­tion ten­fold, seek­ing him out for film and ani­ma­tion projects, putting on shows of his work, and even pub­lish­ing a dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of his art as one of the very first CD-ROMs. (I myself first heard of Mead from Syd Mead’s Ter­raform­ing, a Japan­ese-made video game for the Tur­bo­grafx-CD that made use of his visu­als.) This was per­haps an unex­pect­ed devel­op­ment in the life of a kid from Min­neso­ta who spent his youth draw­ing in soli­tude, even one who grew up absorb­ing the sci-fi swash­buck­ling of Buck Rogers and Flash Gor­don.

But unlike those kitschy, dat­ed worlds of fly­ing cars, gleam­ing tow­ers, rock­et­ships, robots, Mead cre­at­ed cred­i­ble, endur­ing worlds of fly­ing cars, gleam­ing tow­ers, rock­et­ships, robots. That must owe in part to an instinct, devel­oped through indus­tri­al design work, of root­ing the fan­tas­ti­cal in the pos­si­ble. A look back at the full scope of his art — which you can glimpse in the trail­er for the doc­u­men­tary Visu­al Futur­ist: The Life and Art of Syd Mead at the top of the post as well as in the mon­tage video just above — reveals that Mead real­ly believed in the futures he drew. And by hav­ing believed in them, he makes us believe in them. The real 2020 may not bring any of the sky-high build­ings, impos­si­bly sleek vehi­cles, or sub­lime­ly vast pieces of infra­struc­ture that Mead could ren­der so con­vinc­ing­ly. But how­ev­er the next year — or the next decade, or indeed the next cen­tu­ry — does look, it will owe more than a lit­tle to the imag­i­na­tion of Syd Mead.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book Fea­tures The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead & Rid­ley Scott (1982)

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

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

“The Long Tomor­row”: Dis­cov­er Mœbius’ Hard-Boiled Detec­tive Com­ic That Inspired Blade Run­ner (1975)

The Giger Bar: Dis­cov­er the 1980s Tokyo Bar Designed by H. R. Giger, the Same Artist Who Cre­at­ed the Night­mar­ish Mon­ster in Rid­ley Scott’s Alien

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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Why You Should Read Dune: An Animated Introduction to Frank Herbert’s Ecological, Psychological Sci-Fi Epic

in Animation, Books, Literature, Sci Fi | December 30th, 2019

A vision of human­i­ty’s future with­out most of the high tech­nol­o­gy we expect from sci­ence fic­tion, but with a sur­feit of reli­gions, mar­tial arts, and medieval pol­i­tics we don’t; pro­nun­ci­a­tion-unfriend­ly names and terms like “Bene Gesser­it,” “Kwisatz Hader­ach,” and “Muad’Dib”; a sand plan­et inhab­it­ed by giant killer worms: near­ly 55 years after its pub­li­ca­tion, Dune remains a strange piece of work. But apply­ing that adjec­tive to Frank Her­bert’s high­ly suc­cess­ful saga of inter­stel­lar adven­ture and intrigue high­lights not just the ways in which its intri­cate­ly devel­oped world is unfa­mil­iar to us, but the ways in which it is famil­iar — and has grown ever more so over the decades.

“Fol­low­ing an ancient war with robots, human­i­ty has for­bid­den the con­struc­tion of any machine in the like­ness of a human mind,” says Dan Kwartler in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed intro­duc­tion to the world of Dune above. This edict “forced humans to evolve in star­tling ways, becom­ing bio­log­i­cal com­put­ers, psy­chic witch­es, and pre­scient space pilots,” many of them “reg­u­lar­ly employed by var­i­ous noble hous­es, all com­pet­ing for pow­er and new plan­ets to add to their king­doms.” But their super­hu­man skills “rely on the same pre­cious resource: the spice,” a mys­ti­cal crop that also pow­ers space trav­el, “mak­ing it the cor­ner­stone of the galac­tic econ­o­my.”

Her­bert sets Dune — the first of five books by him and many suc­ces­sors by his son Bri­an Her­bert and Kevin J. Ander­son — on the desert plan­et Arrakis, where the noble House Atrei­des finds itself relo­cat­ed. Before long, its young scion Paul Atrei­des “is cat­a­pult­ed into the mid­dle of a plan­e­tary rev­o­lu­tion where he must prove him­self capa­ble of lead­ing and sur­viv­ing on this hos­tile desert world.” Not that Arrakis is just some rock cov­ered in sand: an avid envi­ron­men­tal­ist, Her­bert “spent over five years cre­at­ing Dune’s com­plex ecosys­tem. The plan­et is check­ered with cli­mate belts and wind tun­nels that have shaped its rocky topog­ra­phy. Dif­fer­ing tem­per­ate zones pro­duce vary­ing desert flo­ra, and almost every ele­ment of Dune’s ecosys­tem works togeth­er to pro­duce the plan­et’s essen­tial export.”

Her­bert’s world-build­ing “also includes a rich web of phi­los­o­phy and reli­gion,” which involves ele­ments of Islam, Bud­dhism, Sufi mys­ti­cism, Chris­tian­i­ty, Judaism, and Hin­duism, all arranged in con­fig­u­ra­tions the likes of which human his­to­ry has nev­er seen. What Dune does with reli­gion it does even more with lan­guage, draw­ing for its vocab­u­lary from a range of tongues includ­ing Latin, Old Eng­lish, Hebrew, Greek, Finnish, and Nahu­atl. All this serves a sto­ry deal­ing with themes both eter­nal, like the decline of empire and the mis­placed trust in hero­ic lead­ers, and increas­ing­ly top­i­cal, like the con­se­quences of a feu­dal order, eco­log­i­cal change, and wars over resources in inhos­pitable, sandy places. At the cen­ter is the sto­ry of a man strug­gling to attain mas­tery of not just body but mind, not least by defeat­ing fear, described in Paul’s famous line as the “mind-killer,” the “lit­tle-death that brings total oblit­er­a­tion.”

The scope, com­plex­i­ty, and sheer odd­i­ty of Her­bert’s vision has repeat­ed­ly tempt­ed film­mak­ers and the film indus­try — and repeat­ed­ly defeat­ed them. Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly Alexan­der Jodor­owsky could­n’t get his plans off the ground for a 14-hour epic Dune involv­ing Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles, and Mick Jag­ger. In 1984 David Lynch man­aged to direct a some­what less ambi­tious adap­ta­tion, but the nev­er­the­less enor­mous­ly com­plex and expen­sive pro­duc­tion came out as what David Fos­ter Wal­lace described as “a huge, pre­ten­tious, inco­her­ent flop.” Dune will return to the­aters in Decem­ber 2020 in a ver­sion direct­ed by Denis Vil­leneuve, whose recent work on the likes of Arrival and Blade Run­ner 2049 sug­gests on his part not just the nec­es­sary inter­est in sci­ence fic­tion, but the even more nec­es­sary sense of the sub­lime: a grandeur and beau­ty of such a scale and stark­ness as to inspire fear, much as every Dune read­er has felt on their own imag­ined Arrakis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

The Dune Col­or­ing & Activ­i­ty Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Cre­at­ed Count­less Hours of Pecu­liar Fun for Kids

Why You Should Read The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Bulgakov’s Rol­lick­ing Sovi­et Satire

Why You Should Read One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude: An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Why You Should Read Crime and Pun­ish­ment: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Dostoevsky’s Moral Thriller

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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