June 20, 2016

Westworld @WestworldHBO Approaches

HBO's Westworld aired its second trailer for the series, during the latest episode of Game of Thrones (see the trailer here). The series, slated for a premiere this fall, is a reworking of the 1973 sf drama of the same name which starred Yul Brynner as the seemingly unkillable android The Gunslinger, and also featured a  number of other talented actors, including James Brolin, Richard Benjamin, and Majel Barrett.

This time around, the tone is even darker (if that's possible); the show is "a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin." I didn't know androids had an independent understanding of sin, so it will be interesting to see how they acquire and deal with that concept. Through their programming? Through some kind of glitch? Through some kind of ritual? (Shades of Mary Shelley). Through some act of nature? (Shades of Short Circuit).

The talented cast includes Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, and the (to my mind) underappreciated Louis Herthum, who is featured in the trailer. Nice to see that he has what looks like a major role in this series.

I do love "law &" series...with a nice Chianti. No fava beans necessary.

A Selected Bibliography on SF and Westworld

Brake, Mark, and Neil Hook, Different Engines: How Science Drives Fiction and Fiction Drives Science (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Roberts, Adam, Science Fiction (2d ed.) (Routledge, 2006).

Sobchack, Vivian Carol, Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film (Enlarged ed.) (Rutgers University Press, 1997).

See also the new book edited by Ryan Calo, A. Michael Froomkin, and Ian Kerr, Robot Law (Edward Elgar, 2016).

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