Tag: TV series

Apple TV’s entertaining adaptation of Wells’ Murderbot stories reflects their libertarian themes of free will, anti-slavery and bodily autonomy

By Michael Grossberg

It’s not that often that a Prometheus-award-recognized novel or story is adapted to the large or small screen.

So it’s newsworthy, as well as something of a relief, to report that the Apple TV+ new streaming series of Murderbot is pretty entertaining.

Martha Wells’ Murderbot stories and novels have won Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards, and have been nominated for the Prometheus Award, where her first set of novellas was recognized as a Best Novel finalist. So hopes were high for the TV series, which began streaming in May.

Based on the suspenseful and intelligent half-hour episodes of its first season, Apple TV’s series seems faithful to Well’s acclaimed series of novellas and novels about a rogue security robot who secretly gains free will.

Continue reading Apple TV’s entertaining adaptation of Wells’ Murderbot stories reflects their libertarian themes of free will, anti-slavery and bodily autonomy

Individualism and self-determination in landmark TV series: Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner, the 2002 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner

Here’s the Prometheus Blog Appreciation for The Prisoner,” the 2002 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner for Best Classic Fiction and the first TV series to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

 

By Michael Grossberg

“I am not a number. I am a free man!”
Actor Patrick McGoohan utters those defiant words as the heroic individualist at the center of The Prisoner, one of the most unusual, enigmatic and evocative TV series ever broadcast.
Today, that emblematic catchphrase remains well-known in popular culture, and ranks high among the most familiar lines of dialogue from any TV show or movie of the 20th century.
“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own,” McGoohan declared in the first episode – another among many memorable anti-authoritarian and individualist lines of dialogue that he would utter throughout the iconic series.
Such explicit affirmations of individuality, self-determination and resistance to tyranny were highly unusual on television half a century ago – and sadly remain relatively rare today.

Continue reading Individualism and self-determination in landmark TV series: Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner, the 2002 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner