Machine-Animals and Soul-Mechanisms

Chris Foss was (perhaps is) a British sci-fi artist. He’s most famous for his association with an ill-fated attempt to make the first Dune film in 1976. It's a shame the film was never made because it would most likely have been classic 70’s cinematic madness and excess (witness Zardoz starring Sean Connery in diapers for comparison). Set to star Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali, with a Pink Floyd soundtrack and H.R. Giger and Chris Foss on deck to provide the vision and set design, you have to imagine it would have been epic.

The illustration is of a spice tug from the film.

Here’s a quote by the director Alejandro Jodorowsky addressing his vision for Dune and view of contemporary technological innovation in general. It's obvious that he's speaking with the perspective of a different time and place, but isn't it a bit of a shame that we're still so often intent on designing the sublime, magic and whimsy right out of our products?

“Dune had to be made. But what kind of spaceships to use? Certainly not the degenerate and cold offspring of present day American automobiles and submarines, the very antithesis of art, usually seen in science fiction films, including 2001. No! I wanted magical entities, vibrating vehicles, like fish that swim and have their being in the mythological deeps of the surrounding ocean. The ‘galactic’ ships of North American technocracy are a mouse-gray insult to the divine, therefore delirious, chaos of the universe. I wanted jewels, machine-animals, soul-mechanisms. Sublime as snow crystals, myriad-faceted fly eyes, butterfly pinions. Not giant refrigerators, transistorised and riveted hulks; bloated with imperialism, pillage, arrogance and eunuchoid science.”