Wilmington's Fanzine-Like Essay on SF
I've always been impressed with Michael Wilmington, the Chicago Tribune's film critic, for the familiarity with, and respect for, the body of printed science fiction he exhibits in his reviews of SF movies.
In today's Trib, with I, Robot as his springboard, Wilmington ruminates on the place of SF in culture, and on his own fascination with it.
Still, it's obviously a movie made by people who know and admire Asimov's work; Proyas, the press book says, has been wanting to film these stories since his boyhood. And if it's complained (with some justice) that this is an action-movie-as-usual, that the moviemakers have gotten mired in technology themselves and unwisely junked the original stories, it's worth mentioning that the now widely accepted movie classic "Blade Runner" is not exactly a faithful rendering of its source novel, Philip K. Dick's mind-numbing "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
Yet, despite its own obvious, if initially ineffective, commercial compromises, "Blade Runner," released the year Dick died, probably did as much as any other single event to help guide the now huge Dick cult audiences to his work. Sometimes, compromises have side benefits.
[...]
For about seven years, from 1958 to 1965, I was a science fiction addict -- which means that every month I faithfully bought (or subscribed to) the three top sci-fi magazines, Galaxy, Astounding (later Analog) and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, supplementing them with stacks of paperbacks by my favorite authors (the ones above, plus Brian Aldiss, Arthur C. Clarke, Kurt Vonnegut, J.G. Ballard, Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth) and, of course, never missed a "Twilight Zone."
I contracted this adolescent crush among others (movies, sports, mysteries, music) despite the fact that the sciences were my weakest subjects in school and the ones I least enjoyed. Probably, though, that was because I didn't have teachers as good as Asimov -- who for many years led a double life as much-published author and professor of biochemistry in the Boston University Medical School and finally merged the two careers with his many science fact books. He was as natural and skilled a teacher as he was a tale-spinner, and his great popular reference "The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science" remains one of my favorite books -- and one of several hundred popular science explanatory volumes he wrote for both adults and children.
What appealed to me so strongly about science fiction, despite my disinterest in dissecting frogs or mixing chemicals, was the sense, in that seemingly pulpy literature, of adventure and expanding horizons, of the sheer limitlessness of the best science fiction -- and that overused but apt phrase, its "sense of wonder." Campbell, a crusty guy (and increasingly reactionary after World War II), liked to argue that while the rest of literature encompassed only a fraction of humanity's history and potential, science fiction embraced it all, forward, back and into the infinite.
In today's Trib, with I, Robot as his springboard, Wilmington ruminates on the place of SF in culture, and on his own fascination with it.
Still, it's obviously a movie made by people who know and admire Asimov's work; Proyas, the press book says, has been wanting to film these stories since his boyhood. And if it's complained (with some justice) that this is an action-movie-as-usual, that the moviemakers have gotten mired in technology themselves and unwisely junked the original stories, it's worth mentioning that the now widely accepted movie classic "Blade Runner" is not exactly a faithful rendering of its source novel, Philip K. Dick's mind-numbing "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
Yet, despite its own obvious, if initially ineffective, commercial compromises, "Blade Runner," released the year Dick died, probably did as much as any other single event to help guide the now huge Dick cult audiences to his work. Sometimes, compromises have side benefits.
[...]
For about seven years, from 1958 to 1965, I was a science fiction addict -- which means that every month I faithfully bought (or subscribed to) the three top sci-fi magazines, Galaxy, Astounding (later Analog) and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, supplementing them with stacks of paperbacks by my favorite authors (the ones above, plus Brian Aldiss, Arthur C. Clarke, Kurt Vonnegut, J.G. Ballard, Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth) and, of course, never missed a "Twilight Zone."
I contracted this adolescent crush among others (movies, sports, mysteries, music) despite the fact that the sciences were my weakest subjects in school and the ones I least enjoyed. Probably, though, that was because I didn't have teachers as good as Asimov -- who for many years led a double life as much-published author and professor of biochemistry in the Boston University Medical School and finally merged the two careers with his many science fact books. He was as natural and skilled a teacher as he was a tale-spinner, and his great popular reference "The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science" remains one of my favorite books -- and one of several hundred popular science explanatory volumes he wrote for both adults and children.
What appealed to me so strongly about science fiction, despite my disinterest in dissecting frogs or mixing chemicals, was the sense, in that seemingly pulpy literature, of adventure and expanding horizons, of the sheer limitlessness of the best science fiction -- and that overused but apt phrase, its "sense of wonder." Campbell, a crusty guy (and increasingly reactionary after World War II), liked to argue that while the rest of literature encompassed only a fraction of humanity's history and potential, science fiction embraced it all, forward, back and into the infinite.