I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay

I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay. (1978). Harlan Ellison, author, based on Isaac Asimov's fix-up I, Robot. 1987. Mark Zug, Illus. New York: Aspect-Warner, 1994. See copyright page and HE's introd. for complexities. "A Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc. Book."

Still unfilmed screenplay, with one introd. by IA (1987) and another by HE (1994). In his introd., HE says the script is a hommage to Orson Welles's Citizen Kane; in this case, a reporter is trying to find the secret shared by the newly dead First President of the Galactic Federation and the great robopsychologist Susan Calvin. See for Asimovian robots, plus; a VR battle between a humanoid robot and a ruling computer, questions of AI, enclosure within multi-media chambers, robotic ability to read minds (IA's "Liar!"), and the motif of computer take-over in the manner of Colossus: The Forbin Project and an attempt at computer-instigated apocalypse far more subtle than, but definitely like, SkyNet's accomplishment in the threatened future in the Terminator movies. (RDE, 09/04/95)