James Cameron Is Worried About Our Relationship With Reality

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From Fast Company:

Imagine, if you will, being tasked with categorizing and connecting 200 years of science fiction literature, art, television, and films–and condensing it into six hour-long episodes.

Such was the Dantesque labor of love James Cameron tackled for his new AMC series.

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The series–the second installment of the cable network’s franchise of artist-curated histories of their respective genres–explores science fiction’s roots, how they’ve informed subsequent generations of storytellers and scientists, and ultimately spawned a multibillion-dollar industry. To anchor each episode, Cameron interviews Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, Guillermo del Toro, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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They’re supplemented by observations from another 100 actors, scientists, astronauts, academics, and artists.

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Cameron’s narrative connects thematic dots from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through H.G. Wells, 1930s pulp era, the Golden Age of sci-fi literature in the ’40s and ’50s, spawning authors like Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick, the ’60s and ’70s new wave, cyberpunk in the ’80s, to the present day. It also offers historical context for these periods: the fear of communism intimated in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the threat of nuclear war prompting post-apocalyptic stories like Planet of the Apes and Mad Max, hopeful equality and coexistence in Star Trek, concerns about runaway artificial intelligence in  2001: A Space OdysseyBlade Runner, The Matrix, and Ex Machina, and humanity-decimating epidemics in I Am Legend and The Walking Dead.

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“What was important to me on this series was to trace back to the DNA of the ideas,” Cameron adds. “So if you have a time travel story, who first thought of that? Who did the first space story and how did that enter popular culture? And how did science fiction struggle as a genre to popularize these complex ideas?”

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“A lot of the AI scientists remind me of the atomic scientists of the late ’30s, who saw nothing but upsides to nuclear fission,” he adds. “They looked at it as the power supply of the future and, of course, the very first thing we did with it was build an atomic bomb. Historically, it’s easier to see how the dystopian or dark interpretation of the future could win out. But this is the conversation that humans have to have with ourselves, and science fiction is a great way to do it. I actually think it’s more relevant now than it ever was.”

Link to the rest at Fast Company

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5 thoughts on “James Cameron Is Worried About Our Relationship With Reality”

    • It started airing yesterday so there is only one that “for some reason” is interested in aliens…

      Where do AMC shows like The Walking Dead run in the antipodes? That would be the place to look.

      • Netflix release their own productions internationally. Anything produced by others tends to be geoblocked in Australia until someone can charge extra for people to see it.

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