James Cameron has recently unveiled plans to release a docu-series called JAMES CAMERON'S STORY OF SCIENCE FICTION for AMC. Here's how the series is being described:
Comprised of six one-hour episodes…Each episode will see Cameron introducing one of the “Big Questions” humanity has grappled with through history, delving into Science Fiction’s past to look at how the genre’s films, TV shows, books, and video games were born, and where the genre, and humanity, might be headed. Throughout, Cameron and his contemporaries debate the merits, meanings, and impacts of the films and novels that influenced them.
And here's Cameron himself talking about the show:
When I was a kid, I basically read any book with a spaceship on the cover and I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey many, many times…The movie inspired me to become a filmmaker. I liked the special effects, but I really loved the ideas and the questions behind them: How will the world end? Will technology destroy us? What does it mean to be human? These are subjects sci-fi has never been afraid to tackle.
With this series, we are going back to the origins of sci-fi, following the DNA of these ideas back to the source. Without Jules Verne and H.G. Wells there wouldn’t have been Ray Bradbury or Robert A. Heinlein, and without them, there wouldn’t be Lucas, Spielberg, Ridley Scott or me. As a filmmaker who specializes in science fiction, I’m interested in exploring the struggles and the triumphs that brought these incredible stories to life and seeing how art imitates life, as well as how science fiction imitates and sometimes informs science.
Sounds awesome! And, despite my misgiving about his latter-day output, I think Cameron's probably one of our greatest living sci-fi filmmakers we have, with such classics as TERMINATOR, ALIENS, and THE ABYSS under his belt (as well as working on B-Movie sci-fi schlock, such as Art Direction for BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, so his career has ran the gamut). It can be safely assumed he knows what the hell he's talking about.
JAMES CAMERON'S STORY OF SCIENCE FICTION will premiere on AMC sometime in 2018.