Con Pederson, one of four special effects supervisors on “2001: A Space Odyssey,” died Friday at the MPTF residence in Woodland Hills following complications from Alzheimer’s. He was 91.
Pederson was a fixture in the field of science fiction filmmaking, particularly thanks to his involvement on Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” in 1968. Alongside three other special effects supervisors including Douglas Trumbull, Wally Veevers and Tom Howard, Pederson’s work led the director to his Oscar win for best visual effects in 1969. On set, Pederson ran the “war room,” where the VFX shots were planned, scheduled, tracked and evaluated. For each shot, anywhere from eight to ten elements were added to the original camera negative, an intricate process that took months.
In Michael Benson’s 2018 book “Space Odyssey,” the author quotes Trumbull as saying, “The film’s post-production process was epic in its complexity and Con was the smartest guy in the room.” He added that “‘2001’ absolutely would not have happened without Con.”
After working on the film, Pederson went on to co-found pioneering computer animation company Robert Abel and Associates, where he worked as an animator and programmer alongside Bob Abel. Following the company’s closing, he continued as a creative lead at Metrolight Studios alongside Tim McGovern.
“Con was a constant source of wisdom and knowledge,” said John Nelson, who met Pederson during his time at Robert Abel and Associates. “He was a Renaissance man who was both an artist and a technician. He could animate by hand or write computer programs to generate animations. Several people from Robert Abel’s went on to win Oscars for Visual Effects. I was lucky enough to be one of them.”
Before Pederson began his career in the film industry, he attended UCLA, where he majored in art and anthropology. During his time there, Pederson was hired at Disney after making student films. He was then drafted into the U.S. Army, where he worked with Wernher von Braun on rocket projects. Pederson went on to work at Graphic Films following his time, where he wrote and directed the 1964 film “To The Moon And Beyond” for the world’s fair. Kubrick saw the film, and thus hired Pederson to work on “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Outside of work, he created crossword puzzles that were published across the New York Times, the Wall St. Journal and the Washington Post, and loved science fiction, hiking, sailing and collecting and building things with bricks he had collected from all over the country.
Pederson is survived by his wife Carole and his son Eric, stepchildren Tracey and Morgan and grandchildren Alex and Vivi.
They’re plagiarizing your homework! They’re ripping off your art! They’re probably you’re stealing your data right now! Are they the tech bros in training that sat behind you in undergrad? No, but good guess! They’re AIs. And for better or for worse, they’re here to stay. Scientists and sci-fi writers alike have been dreaming and warning of a future when synthetic intelligence has integrated into modern society, and that future is here! To celebrate (and commiserate) the rise of our robot overlords in training, here’s a list of the 10 best sci-fi movies about artificial intelligence – so when the end times come, you’ll be prepared.
Ghost In The Shell
(Production IG)
Hailed as one of the greatest animated films ever made, Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost In The Shell is a seminal sci-fi anime that spawned an entire franchise – and a sea of imitators. Set in the cyberpunk metropolis of New Port City, the action follows Motoko Kusanagi, a public security agent who is also a full cyborg. Made entirely of machine parts, the only thing human that remains of Motoko is her “ghost” – the in-universe word for the soul. While hunting down a renegade hacker calling himself “The Puppet Master,” Motoko battles with explosive rounds and explosive philosophical questions alike. What is the nature of human consciousness? Can a digital soul without a body be considered human at all? When two consciousnesses merge, is the self annihilated or assimilated? While light on modern depictions of AI, the film instead focuses on the merging of the synthetic and the organic. The human the robot. The ghost and the machine.
Her
(Warner Bros.)
Do you ever feel like ChatGPT is a better listener than your friends and lovers? If that’s the case, you might be interested in a product called the OS – the romantic co-lead of Spike Jonze sci-fi slowburn opus Her. The plot follows Theodore Twombly, who, like you, is fed up with human relationships and is looking to dip a toe in the synthetic dating pool. After purchasing a copy of OS (and answering a few questions about his relationship to his mother) the AI within, like a romance robot genie, wakes up and names herself Samantha. And so begins a marriage of man and machine like you’ve never seen before. Woefully romantic, the film relies entirely on verbal conversation (and some verbal sexy stuff) to portray a deeply intimate love affair between a lonely man and a synthetic woman that is slowly developing a voice of her own.
Ex Machina
(A24)
Alex Garland’s Ex Machina is the stuff tech bro wet dreams are made of – and maybe nightmares too. The story begins with programmer grunt Caleb Smith, who wins an office sweepstakes to spend a week with Blue Book CEO Nathan Bateman. After arriving at Bateman’s palatial home, Caleb is introduced to Ava – a woman Bateman keeps locked up in his basement. It’s not a hostage situation (yet) Ava is an AI – Turing tested, and almost Blue Book approved. Nathan wants Caleb to help him determine if Ava is truly conscious – but not in the way that he thinks. What starts as a simple android/human meet cute quickly devolves into a full blown conspiracy as Ava attempts to convince Caleb to help her escape. But is she doing it out of love for Caleb? Hatred for Nathan? Or maybe something even more deeply human and individualistic: the innate desire for freedom. It was good enough for William Wallace, must be good enough for Ava too.
Blank
(Sparky Pictures)
An underrated artificial diamond in the rough, Natalie Kennedy’s Blank is the story of Claire Rivers, writer who draws a *title drop* blank whenever she sits down to work on her next project. She agrees to go on a writer’s retreat run by an AI, but this isn’t some some summer cabin with ChatGPT booted up on a laptop, this robot expects literary greatness, and due to a catastrophic malfunction, is ready to push Claire to the limit in order to achieve it. It’s essentially Stephen King’s Misery if instead of a Maine-coded writer held captive by Kathy Bates with a sledgehammer, it was the story of a young woman being tormented by an evil android with a slew of creative torture techniques. Maybe artistic greatness really does come from misery and pain? Claire’s gonna have lots of ideas after this ordeal is over.
Blade Runner
(Warner Bros.)
Adapted from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep into the stuff of sci-fi cinema legend, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is the story of AI gone rogue. In a dystopian future, a mega-corporation has engineered synthetic people called “replicants,” originally created to supplement the workforce. After gaining self-awareness (as sci-fi AIs are wont to do) the replicants escape into society at large, and it’s up to “blade runners” like Rick Deckard to hunt them down and terminate them. Like Ex Machina, Blade Runner is a film about machines with an innate desire to be free – who are willing to kill for it. Trouble for the replicants is, Deckard is all willing to kill too.
2001: A Space Odyssey
(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the most critically lauded sci-fi films of all time, and one of the most important films ever made. While the rest of us might have gotten a little lost while this heady film explored its heady themes, we were found again with the introduction of HAL 9000 – one of the scariest film antagonists of all time. The robotic poster child for the “evil malfunctioning machine” trope, HAL 9000 lies, manipulates and even kills for the good of the mission – not good for the spaceship crew it manages. The most chilling part of the film is the question of HAL self awareness. Is it truly an unthinking and unfeeling machine following programming? Or is HAL consciousness that, like us, has wants and dreams and fears to die? It’s this unanswered question that gives the film its power. Is Hal misunderstood? Or a master robot gaslighter? Maybe a bit of both.
Moon
(Sony)
Direct by Duncan Jones, Moon stars Sam Rockwell, along with Sam Rockwell, with a supporting cast of Sam Rockwells and a special guest appearance from Sam Rockwell himself. A lone maintenance worker on the moon, Samuel Bell is just about to finish his three year work contract and then he’s free to go home to his family. After crashing a lunar rover, he awakens and overhears a suspicious conversation between GERTY, the facility AI, and his corporate handlers. Sam later discovers the unconscious body of himself at the crash site, and the pair begin to wonder just how real their memories, their families, and their realities really are. It’s an emotionally charged film that subverts the “evil AI” trope – GERTY really is just trying to help, the only way it’s programmed how.
The Matrix
(Warner Bros.)
Directed by the Wachowskis, The Matrix isn’t a film – it’s a full blown cultural phenomenon. One of the most groundbreaking movies of all time, the plot follows “chosen one” Neo who discovers that he and everyone he knows are living in a simulation. The ultimate trans allegory, The Matrix is a film about awakenings – realizing that everything you thought you knew about yourself and society is wrong. There are a multitude of AI characters in the film and its later sequels, including the iconic Agent Smith – a renegade program with a personal vendetta against Neo. One of the top ten sci-fi films ever made, The Matrix is as relevant as ever.
WALL-E
(Pixar)
An animated dystopian sci-fi romance, Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E is one of Pixar’s most challenging films to date. On an ecologically dead Earth, a lone trash collector robot named WALL-E works tireless to clean up a world destroyed by human greed and neglect. After a meetcute with EVE – robot designed to scan for signs of life – WALL-E short circuits with love. After hitching a ride with EVE back to a spaceship carrying the remnants of the human race, WALL-E discovers a world where mankind has regressed into unhealthy and technologically dependent adult-babies. WALL-E is a film where the robots are more human than humanity itself – by staying plugged in, mankind has disconnected from each other entirely. It’s only robots forming meaningful relationships these days, and robots that will repair humanity’s relationship with the world they left behind.
Metropolis
(Parufamet)
Featuring one of the oldest depictions of artificial intelligence in film, Fritz Lang’s Mertropolis is a German expressionist classic. Set in a retro-futuristic dystopia, the film follows Freder, the wealthy and indolent son of an oligarch, in his quest to liberate the city’s working class from subterranean squalor. Out of the goodness of his heart? No, in order to impress Maria, a woman he just met. While Maria has been championing the rights of the working class for years, her newfound support from Freder has made the situation for the upper class untenable. In order to sow seeds of destruction, Freder’s father commissions one of his scientists to build a duplicate Maria out of machine parts – to fool and foil the revolution from the inside. Part Bladerunner, part Romeo and Juliet, part Arcane, this sci-fi still holds up almost a century later.
Sarah Fimm (they/them) is actually nine choirs of biblically accurate angels crammed into one pair of $10 overalls. They have been writing articles for nerds on the internet for less than a year now. They really like anime. Like… REALLY like it. Like you know those annoying little kids that will only eat hotdogs and chicken fingers? They’re like that… but with anime. It’s starting to get sad.
Movies just don’t take place in the present day — you’ll find plenty that are either set in the past or in the future. Period pieces have the distinct advantage of a historical record, so they can better emulate the time in which the story takes place. But science fiction films that take place in the future don’t have the luxury of history books or photographs to draw from. Rather, the filmmakers have to get creative and build a vision of the future that feels removed from current everyday life, but still believable enough to exist within the realm of possibility.
As it turns out, humans envisioned much different outcomes for the future of civilization than we’re currently experiencing now — and these movies are proof. Why is that? Because the “future” depicted on screen has already come to pass. We may not have flying cars, but we do have self-driving ones. Technology has made leaps and bounds, just not in all the ways someone from a previous era might expect. That being said, you’ll notice a few key similarities between these films’ projections of the world of tomorrow and what ended up transpiring in real life. Who knows which elements of today’s future-set movies will end up coming true in the decades to come?
While the following films may have seemed futuristic when they were first released, the people of the future (us) can see the errors in their predictions. Believe it or not, these famous science fiction movies now officially take place in the past.
Futuristic Sci-Fi Movies That Are Now Set In The Past
When these sci-fi movies came out, they offered predictions for the future of society — years later, they’re officially set in the past.
The structure reflects the striking desert landscape with its mirrored exterior.
Brian Ashby
Producers Chris Hanley and Roberta Hanley are known for their innovative film projects, including cult hit American Psycho and Sofia Coppola’s directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides. Before his film career, Chris also worked in art, dealing in pieces by such luminaries as Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
When it came time for the couple to design a house, they once again wanted something on the cutting edge. The Hanleys partnered with architect Tomas Orsinski, a Frank Gehry collaborator, to design their landmark Invisible House in Joshua Tree, California, two hours outside of Los Angeles. The architectural icon has hit the market for $18 million.
Heat-reflecting Solarcool glass gives the home its unique look and keeps the interiors temperate.
Brian Ashby, Chris Hanley and Masek Imagining.
Inspired by the sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, the home is a 5,500-square-foot mirrored box that reflects back the surrounding desert scenery and seems to blend into the landscape. Heat-reflecting Solarcool glass gives the home its unique look and keeps the interiors temperate despite the harsh desert weather, and filters out harmful UV rays. An eco-friendly foam roof and solar-electric system make the house a model of sustainability.
Primary bedroom
Brian Ashby
The bedrooms and bathrooms are separated by white partitions.
Brian Ashby
The glass walls open on three sides for a novel take on the indoor-outdoor living concept. Inside, a 100-foot heated indoor swimming pool is capped by a 224-square-foot projection wall perfect for screening films. The home’s three large bedrooms each have their own en-suite bathroom with Boffi fixtures. The primary suite is equipped with a giant glass bedframe and features a five-star, resort-inspired bath with soaking tub, floating vanities and rain shower.
The structure offers expansive views of the 90-acre surroundings from within and reflects the … [+] striking desert landscape with its mirrored exterior.
Brian Ashby
A world-class chef’s kitchen makes ready-to-cater events a breeze with double ovens, a separate refrigerator and freezer storage, marble surfaces and Miele, Sub Zero and Wolf appliances anchored upon sleek concrete flooring. A Flos lighting system creates radiant ambient lighting with various colors to fit the mood.
Movie night at the Invisible House
Brian Ashby
Situated on 67 acres of tranquil desert, the home provides seclusion and oneness with nature. With cameos in numerous film projects and more extensive coverage on Netflix’s The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals, the home has been available as both a film location and a luxury Airbnb stay with a per-night price of $2,500. A good mix of home and nature, the property is bordered by national parkland and a gated tortoise reserve, but it is only 10 minutes from Joshua Tree’s downtown. Other nearby options for entertainment include the Noah Purifoy Art Museum and truly limitless hiking trails.
The living and dining areas are arranged around the massive 100-foot-long pool.
Brian Ashby
Joshua Tree, California is known for both its spectacular rock formations and the quirky artists’ community that has sprung up among the eponymous spiky trees, according to TopTenRealEstateDeals.com. Escaping from LA’s corporate jungle, hundreds of painters and sculptors’ studios dot the high desert, giving it a Mad Max feel.
The area was also a well-known pilgrimage site for the superstars of classic rock, with such heavyweights as Keith Richards, Jim Morrison and Bono drawing inspiration from its stark scenery (with, perhaps, some psychedelic assistance). A-Listers like Madonna, Kanye West and Justin Bieber have vacationed in the area, while local recording studios have attracted the likes of Queens of the Stone Age, Iggy Pop and Beyoncé.
