When Brooks wanted to get his robots to space, he collaborated with JPL, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.
English 3720 - Literature, Science, and Technology: Frankenstein’s Future: Robotics and Cloning in Science Fiction and Film Dashboard
Description
English 3720, Vanderbilt University (Spring 2017). “Literature, Science, and Technology: Frankenstein’s Future: Robotics and Cloning in Science Fiction and Film.” TR 9:35-10:50 (ESB 320). Professor Jay Clayton.
How do the futures literature and film imagine shape public attitudes toward science and technology? What is the human in an age of artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, and synthetic biology? How do science fiction and films influence public policy concerning scientific research? This course focuses on fictions and films about artificial life from Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and James Whale’s iconic 1931 film of that novel, through Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), to classic robot stories by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and others, to twenty-first century dystopias such as Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003) and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004). Films will include adaptations of many of these novels, as well as Blade Runner (1982), A.I. (2001), Her (2013), and Ex Machina (2015).
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Individual Entries
In the third story of Cloud Atlas, journalist Luisa Rey meets scientist Rufus Sixsmith in Buenas Yerbas, California. She investigates a nuclear power plant that Sixsmith suspected was not safe shortly before his suspiscious suicide.
In the second story of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, musician Robert Frobisher writes letters describing the events of his life to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith, in Zedelghem. He becomes a secretary for a formerly famous composer, eventually helping him acheive recognition once more.
Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canda in 1939, and she currently resides in Toronto, Canada.
Capital of the Northern Region in Asimov's "The Evitable Conflict."
Alan Turing was working at Victoria University of Manchester when he wrote "Computing Machinery and Intelligence".
This is the birthplace of Masahiro Mori and the origin of "The Uncanny Valley" or "Bukimi no Tani."
"Ex Machina" filmed Nathan's mountain in Valldal, Norway
"Ex Machina" filmed Nathan's mountain in Valldal, Norway
In the first story of Cloud Atlas, American Adam Ewing waits for repairs for his ship as he sails from his home in San Francisco to the South Pacific in order to execute a will in 1850. While there, he meets Dr. Henry Goose and witnesses a number of strange events including a public flogging by the Maori people. Later, the flogged man stows away on Ewing's ship.