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The Year of the Sex Olympics
The Year of the Sex Olympics is a 1968 television play made by the BBC and first broadcast on BBC2 as part of Theatre 625. It stars Leonard Rossiter, Tony Vogel, Suzanne Neve and Brian Cox. It was directed by Michael Elliot. The writer was Nigel Kneale, best known as the creator of Quatermass.
Influenced by concerns about overpopulation, the counterculture of the 1960s and the societal effects of television, the play depicts a world of the future where a small elite control the media, keeping the lower classes docile by serving them an endless diet of lowest common denominator programmes and pornography. The play concentrates on an idea the programme controllers have for a new programme which will follow the trials and tribulations of a group of people left to fend for themselves on a remote island. In this respect, the play is often cited as having anticipated the craze for reality television.
Kneale had fourteen years earlier adapted George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as a classic and controversial BBC broadcast and the play reflects much of Kneale's assimilation of Orwell's concern about the power of the media and Kneale's experience of the evolving media industry.http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/560006/index.html
Now regarded as one of the 1960s' most effective and engaging one-off pieces of science fiction, the play is chiefly remembered for the prescience of the scenarios it develops. Most obviously, the play's characters devise a television programme called 'The Live Life Show' in which a group of people is separated from society. The ensuing struggle to adapt to new surroundings is broadcast live, with the viewing public's voyeuristic pleasure heightened by the problems participants endure. Both the template for this fictitious entertainment and the audience's rapt reaction seem to presage the proliferation of 'reality' television in the 1990s, and, in particular, Castaway (BBC, 2000), a show in which members of the public volunteered to live on an inhospitable island deprived of everyday luxuries normally available to society. Similarly, the 'dumbing down', 'sexing up' and sheer predominance of television appear to have been predicted by Kneale's play.
http://cinematrices.wordpress.com/category/chronology/1960s/1968/
1969's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_Power
The novel is set in the 22nd century of the Noon Universe. Mankind is capable of near-instanteneous interstellar travel. Earth social organization is presumably Communist, and can be described as a highly technologically advanced anarchistic meritocracy.[citation needed]
There is no state structure, no institutionalized coercion (no police etc.), yet functioning of the society is safeguarded by raising everyone as responsible individuals, with guidance of a set of High Councils accepted by everyone in each particular field of activity.
It is a society of highly morally evolved individuals that has solved all of its material problems, knows no crime, feels no threats (except possibly from unchecked scientific exploration) and spends much of its efforts in scientific research (space exploration done mostly by volunteers), arts, education and caring for the young. Teachers are the most honorable profession.
One of the controversial occupations is progressor. They are agents embedded in less advanced humanoid civilizations in order to accelerate their development or resolve their problems. Progressors' methods range from rescuing local scientists and artists to overthrowing local governments.
The book is set on one such war-torn post-nuclear war planet, Saraksh, where a space-exploring Earth youth gets stuck after his rocket is first damaged and then blown up, forcing him on his journey of discovery and contact within a fascist society of one of the planet's countries.
Noon Universe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noon_Universe
Description
The victory of communism and the advance of technological progress on the Earth of the Noon Universe resulted in an over-abundance of resources and eliminated the need for most types of manual labor.
The most striking difference between Noon Universe and most of the other fictional sci-fi universes (most famous include Dune, Star Wars and Babylon 5) is a complete denial of imperialism. This means that no sentient race in the Noon Universe builds an inter-planetary state (republic, empire etc.) or has ever built one. Instead, most of them keep to their own planets, and the only space-faring ones (humans and, probably, Wanderers) have chosen a selfless existence assisting in the scientific development of less advanced civilizations ("progressing" or "progressorizing") rather than building a galactic empire based on their technological advantage.
Mankind is capable of near-instanteneous interstellar travel. Earth social organization is presumably Communist, and can be described as a highly technologically advanced anarchistic meritocracy. There is no state structure, no institutionalized coercion (no police etc.), yet functioning of the society is safeguarded by raising everyone as responsible individuals, with guidance of a set of High Councils accepted by everyone in each particular field of activity.
It is a society of highly morally evolved individuals that has solved all of its material problems, knows no crime, feels no threats (except possibly from unchecked scientific exploration) and spends much of its efforts in scientific research (space exploration done mostly by volunteers), arts, education and caring for the young. Teachers are the most honorable profession.
One of the controversial occupations is progressor. They are agents embedded in less advanced humanoid civilizations in order to accelerate their development or resolve their problems. Progressors' methods range from rescuing local scientists and artists to overthrowing local governments.
The main governing body is the World Council, composed of the brightest scientists, historians, doctors and teachers. The local matters are handled by the regional versions of the council. Planetary councils are present on each Earth colony (e.g. Rainbow), as well, although "colony" in this context refers to a planet that wasn't home to any sentient life before the arrival of Terran settlers. In the Noon Universe, Earth has never attempted to seize permanent control over any other civilization.
While the ethics-based society has managed to successfully provide for all human beings, some have difficulty finding their place, instead taking to space exploration, traveling to previously uncharted worlds. The practice is generally frowned upon, seen as diversion from creativity and self-realization.
The universe is populated by a number of sentient races. Some of them are humanoid, while others are so alien that humanity didn't realize that they were sentient for decades. Several sentient races maintain diplomatic relations with Earth's government. Many planets in Noon Universe are inhabited by races identical to humans in all but minor genetic differences. It has been speculated that they were humans who wound up on other worlds due to the Wanderers' manipulations (as Beetle in the Anthill shows, that is hardly unprecedented).
The Wanderers are, without a doubt, the most mysterious race in the Noon Universe. Incredibly technologically advanced and highly secretive, the Wanderers manipulate sentient beings throughout Noon Universe for their own purposes. While those purposes were never clarified, it was hinted that they try to "progress" various sentient beings.
Twixt has received high anticipation for release among fans of Coppola. As of November 2011, it had not had a wide release, with screenings exclusively at film festivals. It was a featured film at the November 2011 American Film Market.
Twixt will be given a theatrical release in the UK in spring 2012, after one in France in April.
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