Prophets of Science Fiction - Slate magazine has a good review of this new show by Ridley Scott (director of Alien and Blade Runner). It’s pretty positive, with the key point being that the show doesn’t just look at historical predictions of technology to see if they’ve materialized by now, but more importantly at the social context of the ideas and dilemmas discussed by various scifi authors of old, and how those have come to be part of the real world.
The show could have gotten lost in the asteroid fields of plot and the finer points of the fake science in Shelley’s and Dick’s novels; it could have been a fan show or another simpering documentary. But instead, it successfully ties science fiction icons to the questions that haunted us 200 years ago and now alike, about what it means to be human, about whether there are places that science shouldn’t venture.
space engineer, scifi author, technology maven, and addicted to beauty in all forms - the best is always yet to come ...
