Rob Sawyer SF lecture on TVOntario tomorrow
by Rob - February 2nd, 2008.Filed under: Uncategorized.
Tomorrow (Saturday, February 2, 2008), at 4:00 p.m., I’ll be on TVOntario’s Big Ideas, talking about science fiction in a lecture recorded in October 2007 at the University of Waterloo. On the same show: Steven Pinker! The hour-long program repeats Sunday, February 3, 2008, also at 4:00 p.m.
TVO’s description:
STEVEN PINKER | ROBERT J. SAWYER
Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, examines how language reveals the way we think by exposing the physics built into our nouns, the temporal characteristics of our verbs and the manner in which our brains react to profanity.
Also included in this episode, author Robert J. Sawyer explains how Hollywood’s approach to science fiction, starting with George Lucas’s Star Wars, has dulled the edge that made science fiction such a pertinent film genre. Sawyer disects the problematic aspects of the original Star Wars film and shows how science fiction books continue to tackle difficult issues while their big screen counterparts take the easy road of big explosions and small ideas.
More information here.
UPDATE: An MP3 audio-version of my lecture is here.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
February 1st, 2010 at 11:39 pm
I enjoyed this lecture quite a bit, Mr. Sawyer. Thanks for posting this. I have bemoaned the dumbing of Science Fiction for some time now, and this puts some of my sentiments about the chief culprit into words.